


The Best-Laid Plans

by tollofthebells



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, Mild Smut, Mutual Pining, Tension, if only friends with benefits to lovers was a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:20:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24444970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tollofthebells/pseuds/tollofthebells
Summary: "You’re a lonely person, Vicar Max, even if you can’t see so yourself.Especiallyif you can’t see it yourself. It’s what keeps you away from the crowd but unable to shut your door at night."
Relationships: The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto
Comments: 71
Kudos: 131





	1. Laughter

The captain has a bright, genuine laugh—the kind that betrays the static stillness of her face and makes her squeeze her eyes shut just to feel it from her stomach to her smile. It annoys him, at first—there’s so much to be done and seemingly less and less time to do it every day, and maybe also because he’s forgotten what it’s like to laugh himself (the short chuckles peppered in after dry jokes he’s spent too long reciting in his head before actually telling out loud are more robotic than genuine these days), and maybe because _how is there room for so much laughter if one is to carry such a heavy burden as she says?_

He wonders that a lot, in the beginning.

The first time he hears her laugh, after he’s all but jumped at the first chance he gets to board her ship and get out of the miserable backwards township that is Edgewater, she’s with Parvati. It’s distinctive and hearty and louder than he’d expect from someone of her small stature. The two have hardly returned from their business in town—business he tries, at first, to know nothing about—but he’s glad to have a pair of living souls on the ship he had for days prior shared with no one but its own computer. The first time he hears her laugh, they’re trying to figure out how the fucking _shower_ works. Like they’ve never been on a freighter before—or like this is the captain’s— _Rae’s_ , he reminds himself, after she’d pressed him too many times to call her by her name—first time on her own ship. _But believable for Miss Holcomb_ , he thinks sourly when the two step out of the bathroom with droplets of water rolling down their cheeks and the collars and shoulders of their shirts darkened from the rogue spray of water and laughter still visible on their faces even once the sound is gone from their lips. He scowls. What kind of ship the captain is running seems beyond him if she can’t even work her own plumbing. (When he looks back on it later, he supposes he could’ve believed her telling everyone she was a colonist from the Hope a little sooner. Not knowing how to work her own ship’s shower seemed like a clue enough.)

Rae laughs at Felix—not _with_ Felix, the way she laughs _with_ Parvati, but _at_ Felix. She laughs at how naive he is, mostly, even though he can’t be more than a few years younger than she is, and the boy takes the laughter as flirting, trying too hard to make jokes every time he elicits a giggle from her mouth but what he doesn’t realize is that it’s when he’s _not_ trying to be funny that she does it. It’s when he tries to play tossball with a mock apple and Parvati as his only opponent in the cargo bay and the poor engineer ultimately admits _um, Felix, I really don’t know what you want me to do here_. Rae laughs at that. Or when he thinks he can balance one too many boxes of Purpleberry Crunch in a stack from the kitchen to his cabin and they go spilling—and cracking open—all through the corridor, decorating each of the crew members’ bedroom floors with purple nonsense. She laughs at that too, though when she accidentally steps in some, one foot in the hallway and one heel in Max’s room, unwittingly crushing purple bits into a thousand pieces on his floor as she discusses proper handgun maintenance with Ellie across the hall, he doesn’t quite see the humor.

She can hardly manage a smile, let alone laughter, out and about in the townships and wilds they visit over the course of his first couple weeks aboard the Unreliable. They don’t stray from Terra 2, in spite of his request—near insistance, if he’s willing to admit it—that they move forward to Monarch. No. Off the Unreliable, she’s all business, and all methodical. Jaded, mostly—another hint her tales of the Hope are true, or at least a telltale sign that she’s a spacer with no corporate loyalty. She’s a spitfire when it’s not just her and her friends, her crew. Knows her way around a handgun—if it’s true she spent seventy years in cryo-hibernation, it certainly doesn’t show in her marksmanship. She listens well and she speaks frankly. In Edgewater, she torches Tobson’s sugared words with biting remarks of her own; in Roseway, she berates Crane until even Parvati takes half a step toward her, the thought of intervening visible on her furrowed brow even if she never ends up acting on it. _He deserved it_ , is all she says when they finally walk out into the bright sunlight, the stench of raptor and human corpses alike still hanging heavy in the streets days after the town was attacked. The only time she laughs in the townships are when a corporate bigwig asks her to reconsider, expects her to take pity on Spacer’s Choice or Rizzo’s or whatever other brand they’ve brainwashed residents and passerby into worshipping. It’s a short laugh, then. Dry and jaded and uncomfortably familiar to Max, and far from the laughter he hears aboard the ship.

Like when she drinks with Ellie and Nyoka, late into the night over card games or stories, Zero Gee and Spectrum vodka and Iceberg whiskey and whatever they can get their hands on, _taste be damned, apparently_ , she laughs so hard that she wheezes, that tears stream down her rosy cheeks and she has to grip Ellie’s shoulder to keep her balance. Nights like those, the three stay in the kitchen long after night cycle has started. Sometimes Felix joins them, sometimes Parvati. Often the trio are bawdy enough that they drive away any additional company, himself included. Himself _especially_.

He’s rummaging through the cabinets for something to have for dinner on one such night when Nyoka pulls the collar of Rae’s shirt so hard she nearly falls off the chair. He tries to pay them no mind. He _wants_ to. But he can hear the whispers, the little giggles with no discernible words and yet he _knows_ , the back of his neck turning hotter for every second he stands before the cupboard, exactly who they’re whispering about.

Finally, the familiar screech of a chair leg against the metal flooring brings an end to their whispering, and Rae clears her throat.

“Wanna join us for a whiskey, Vicar?”

He nearly chokes on his own breath, and Nyoka dissolves into another fit of giggles, making only half an attempt to hide her laughter behind the lip of her bottle.

“Um,” he mutters when he finally manages to breathe at all, ignoring the way Rae punches her friend in the shoulder, the voiceless _shut up!_ he can read on her lips. It’s not enough that it should fluster him. _Nyoka_ certainly doesn’t fluster him, not after a few meals shared over friendly conversations of heavy weapon preferences and hand-to-hand combat tales. But Rae—Rae who scarcely speaks to him outside of _don’t worry, we’ll get your book translated soon_ or _hope it’s okay that we’re stopping on the Groundbreaker before we go to Monarch!_ or _too bad no one around here knows French_ or asking him to define a set of tossball terms so that she can understand something Felix said—Rae has him flustered. He’s still not sure why she’s even agreed to help him with the book at all.

He certainly wouldn’t help him, if the roles were changed.

“Um, no, that’s...I’m all right, thank you.” He snatches a few pieces of Pre-Sliced Bred—it’s not even what he _wanted_ , but suddenly choosing his own dinner appears to be a luxury he can’t afford, all negated by the need to get out of the kitchen and return to the peace and quite _and safety_ of his room. _The Bred will do._ Ignoring the snickers and the hushed whispers from the two girls, he flees the kitchen, almost— _almost_ —shutting his door behind him. But he doesn’t. _A vicar must be available to his people_ , he reminds himself almost robotically—whether his people are corporate laborers or the rag-tag bunch of lawless misfits Rae seems to attract everywhere the Unreliable lands. _Still._

And so the door remains open. Even if every night he’s spent on the ship thus far suggests he’ll have no visitors—least of all Rae. For all her companionship with the rest of the crew, he and the captain just haven’t hit it off.

Unwrapping the painfully bland and insufferably dry Bred (already he regrets not retrieving a beverage from the kitchen, but he’s made his exit, _no turning back now_ ), he settles down with his research, as comfortable as one can be at the cramped excuse for a desk that somehow feels more like a home than the ornate wooden furniture he’d spent years among in Edgewater ever did. As the evening goes on, the Unreliable’s occupants pass back and forth in the hall outside his door—Ellie sauntering off to the kitchen (without a doubt off to join the captain and Nyoka), Felix half-walking, half-jogging to his room lest he miss the start of this week’s episode of some silly aetherwave serial, SAM with his ever-droning vacuum hose. Only Parvati pauses at the open door to speak to him— _goodnight, Mr. Vicar, sir_ —as she does every night, and he replies with an attempt at a smile as always. None come in.

At least, not until the noise from the kitchen has long since died down—even Ellie and Nyoka have parted ways into their separate bedrooms—and he’s finally able to enjoy some quiet, really make some progress in the books he’s been searching through, _and maybe even sneak back into the kitchen again_ and—

“Mind if I read with you?”

He almost falls out of his chair, undignified as it may be, but _there she is_. The captain—Rae—in the hall. In his _doorway_.

He coughs. “Well, I—”

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” she interrupts him, her first question apparently forgotten, suspicious even with the hint of a smile on her lips. “The rest of the crew is.”

She leans against the doorframe casually, like it _belongs_ to her— _well, it_ does _belong to her_ , he reminds himself. He closes his book slowly, narrowing his eyes. “Shouldn’t _you_?”

She shrugs, half-smile fading slowly on her face. “Jet lag.”

“What?”

Like her smile, the glimmer of a laugh seems to disappear from her eyes. “It’s an—an Earth saying,” she mutters. “I’m joking.”

He frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“When was the last time you left Edgewater?”

“Too long ago,” he scoffs, and _now_ she grins— _that_ smile, bright and at the same time almost teasing, almost... _something_.

“Well, on Earth, when you fly somewhere—on the same planet, I mean, not in space—and you land and it’s a different time of day than when you started, and it takes your body a while to get used to the difference, we call it jet lag.” The smile lingers on her face as she searches his eyes for something.

Recognition, maybe. Humor.

“Oh,” is all he can manage.

“It’s…” She chews the inside of her lip, less collected than he normally sees her with the rest of the crew, and _far_ less collected than she’d ever be caught appearing anywhere off the Unreliable. “It’s a joke because you asked if I should be sleeping. So I said ‘jet lag.’” She swallows. “It’s—it’s funny if you understand it.”

He forces a smile. “Yes, Captain. I suppose it is.”

Flustered, she turns around, taking in the contents of his cabin. Now that she’s here—actually here, inside, not just using his doorway as a place to lean while she converses with Ellie or directs SAM on exactly where Nyoka spilled Algae Lager in the hall—he realizes it’s the first time she’s ever visited his room. For anything.

“I can leave, if you want,” she says suddenly.

“Ah—” he coughs. “No, that’s all right. The door is open for a reason.”

She wrinkles her nose, still looking over his shelves of books. “For someone with an open-door policy, you don’t really...come off as very welcoming.”

He’s not really sure what to say to that.

“Were you as warm with your parishioners in Edgewater?”

“Well,” he starts. The answer should be obvious. “I am a vicar. It’s my job to be a guiding presence in the community.”

She smiles slyly. Skeptically. “That’s not really what I asked,” she says, but she turns around again, back to his books, the matter behind them. Or behind her, at least.

She toys with the dark brown bottle on his desk, dusty except where his fingers grip the neck every night, flipping lid open and taking a whiff. “So this is why you didn’t want to drink with me and Nyoka,” she says with a smirk.

“That is absolutely not true, Captain,” he says quickly, even though the observation makes him flustered. “I simply have a lot of research to do. And I prefer to do it in the quiet of my own room.”

She shrugs. “That’s why I asked if I could read with you. Because it’s quiet in here.”

“Is it not quiet in your quarters?” he asks, only realizing how cold the question seems once he’s already gone and said it. “Not that—I mean, please, I welcome your company. I just meant—”

“Don’t you ever get lonely?” she interrupts him, and he pauses.

“I..no, I’m not—I have plenty to keep me busy.”

She says nothing, but he can see it in her eyes, again: _that’s not really what I asked._

“Why?” he counters. “Do you?”

It’s a stupid question. He knows it as soon as the words leave his mouth, and still, she smiles—faraway and almost somber, but she does.

“I’ve been inviting anyone who asks to join me on a ship that’s not mine in a solar system I know nothing about on a mission to save a group of people I last saw technically 70 years ago,” she jokes dryly. “So I don’t know, really.”

 _It was a stupid question_ , he thinks again. He breathes out slowly. “You must miss Earth.”

She shrugs, absently using her thumb to fan out the pages of a book that looks otherwise as though it’s never been opened. “I miss people.”

He smiles wryly. “Is your humble crew not enough for you, Captain?” he teases.

The flicker in her smile tells him he’s misstepped again.

“The crew is great,” she says soberly, _genuinely_. “I don’t think I’ve ever known someone as kind and well-intentioned as Parvati, or anyone as good for a laugh and a drink as Nyoka and Ellie. And Felix is just a riot. I give him a lot of shit, but he really has potential. And you—”

“Say no more, Captain.”

“Rae,” she corrects him.

“Rae,” he repeats, not missing a beat. “But really. You don’t have to...make anything up. I needed my book. And now I need a way to get to Monarch.” He licks his lips, conscience tugging at his thoughts but _I’ve shared enough for now_. “That much is true. I’m grateful for your kindness and your invitation to join you, and I’ll help you in any way I can along the way, but—”

“You seemed like a lonely soul, too,” she interrupts him, and he freezes.

“I’m hardly—”

“Did you have a lot of friends in Edgewater?”

He swallows. “Did you have many on Earth?”

She runs her fingers through her wavy hair, out of its braid for once, deep brown showing at the crown of her head where the rest has been pink ever since Nyoka coerced her into dyeing it in the ship’s shower one night after returning from the Groundbreaker. “Some,” she shrugs. “Not _many_. And anyway, you didn’t answer my question.”

He frowns. “No, Captain.”

“Rae.”

“No, _Rae_ ,” he says, ignoring the sly smile she gives him when he says her name. Ignoring the fluttering, unfamiliar feeling his chest too. “I didn’t have friends in Edgewater.”

“Lovers?” she teases, and he feels his face heat up at the suggestion.

“No, Rae, I did not have any lovers in Edgewater either.” But somehow, the answer leaves him feeling defensive. “Not that I _couldn’t_ have,” he points out. “Distractions from the Plan are frowned upon by the OSI, of course, but there’s nothing explicitly prohibiting…” He trails off as he notices her grin widen.

“I _told_ Ellie vicars could fuck,” she mutters before clapping her hand over her mouth. “I mean—”

“If—” he says suddenly, trying not to appear flustered _and yet it’s Rae, so flustered I am_ , “if that had been an uncertainty for you and Ms. Fenhill before, you could have…” He clears his throat. “You could’ve asked.”

Rae snorts, face still half-hidden by her hand, and he frowns.

“You didn’t come here to read, did you?” he asks her.

And there it is again. That sly smile. “I didn’t come here to read any more than you have your door open as a ‘welcoming gesture.’”

“Well, I—” he stammers.

“You’re a lonely person, Vicar Max, even if you can’t see so yourself. _Especially_ if you can’t see it yourself. It’s what keeps you away from the crowd but unable to shut your door at night.”

He narrows his eyes at her, and she smiles right back, silvery-gray irises shimmering in the dim lighting of his room. Even when he stands to meet her, she doesn’t back down. _She thinks she’s so smart_ , he thinks, like she has him figured out. _She doesn’t_.

“Max,” he says finally, testing how close he can stand to her, but still, she doesn’t move.

“What?”

“Just ‘Max’ is fine,” he clarifies. _She smells like rusty water. And cheap Spacer’s Choice soap_. “And I’m not lonely just because I like to be alone.”

“Well if you’re not lonely, tell me to leave.”

He opens his mouth. He _means_ to tell her. And yet the words never come.

Carefully, and with a devilish smile, she stands on her tiptoes and _damn it_ , he’s never noticed the height difference before, but _fuck me_ he thinks when her lips brush the corner of his mouth.

As quickly as it’d happened, she’s on the flats of her feet again, grinning and unashamed. “Tell me not to do it again,” she says breathlessly, the coy playfulness in her voice slowly replaced by something far more serious, “and I won’t.”

He clears his throat, his mouth dry and his skin hot all over. “I…”

She raises her eyebrows.

“I’m not _lonely_ , Captain.”

Immediately, she steps backward. “I won’t push you into anything, Vicar,” she says, and the title bothers him more than it should even when he’d started it. Even when he’d used hers first.

 _Well, fuck me_ , he thinks again.

She’s made up her mind, about to leave when he grabs her by the wrist, turning her around quickly against the door he presses shut for quite possibly the first time since he first boarded the Unreliable.

“Call it what you want,” she breathes. “We could all use a little company once in a while.”

He shakes his head. She has him undone—figuratively and _soon to be literally_ , he has to admit. “Fuck it,” he mutters, leaning into a kiss that’s permeated by her laughter, lips meeting a smile even he finds contagious.

It’s the first time she’s ever laughed with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alexa play hit me baby one more time


	2. Hopeless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which max falls hard but denies it even harder

_We could all use a little company once in a while_ , she’d said. He knows what she meant.

An _arrangement_. A _relationship_. Of sorts. Something somewhere between strangers and friends, or something between friends and lovers, but ultimately, something in between. Neither here nor there. It’s a good arrangement, in theory. He thinks little of it. _I’m not lonely_ , he _still_ insists, even after she’s stopped trying to tell him otherwise.

But he _enjoys_ her company. And he’d like to think she feels the same way. And it’s not _all_ sex (although that certainly makes up a good portion of it). Sometimes one of them retrieves snacks from the kitchen afterward, and they sit together in his cabin and make small talk. Sometimes they read—he studies his books on Scientism, on the Plan, and she thumbs through a cheap novella or two borrowed from another of her friends aboard the Unreliable. Once, while he listens to a tossball match over the radio at his desk, she asks him a few questions about the game. He answers readily and enthusiastically, if a little caught off guard, and he can tell when his enthusiasm has gone too far when he sees her eyes glaze over a bit, her initial interest dissolving as he loses her in terminology and intricate rules that he realizes—albeit too late—go over her head. But she still listens to the game, from halfway underneath the sheets on his bed, even after he stops rambling. And he thinks she enjoys it. Or at least, he hopes.

It’s a _good_ arrangement, for him and her both, and _I’m certainly not lonely_ he reminds himself still but when she leaves his bedroom, be it right after or, with increasing frequency, hours of intermittent napping later, he finds himself better off for being in her company.

It’s not until a few weeks into it all that he begins to see the danger in the growing comfort he finds in their relationship.

They’re docked on the Groundbreaker—at Parvati’s humble request, paying another visit to Ms. Tennyson—and alone on the ship the first time Max begins to realize. The others are gone, too—all dispersed to restock personal supplies or visit the Lost Hope or otherwise meander about the massive transport ship, anything to stretch their legs and get a change of scenery from the comfortable but admittedly small Unreliable.

Everyone except Max and Rae.

He pulls out of her breathless and hot and a little weak in the knees, although he’d never admit it, straightening and stretching and lifting the bottom of his undershirt to wipe the sweat from his brow all while she rolls over lazily onto her back, smiling— _smirking_ at him, sly and sated and stark naked, too. “What time is it?” she asks, stretching her arms over her head, over her unbraided, dyed pink hair fanned out over his pillow.

He snorts, yanking a towel from off the rack hanging on the back of his door, and she makes a grabbing motion with her hands until he returns her smile and tosses it to her. “Uhhh,” he sighs finally. “Fuck if I know.”

“It is 15:40 local time, Captain,” ADA’s voice says clearly over the intercom system, and Rae throws one arm over her eyes and the tops of her reddening cheeks.

“For fuck’s sake.”

“You asked what time it was, Captain,” ADA points out.

It takes a lot to have Rae flustered, Max has observed, but it _has_ happened before. Once, on Terra 2, when she thought her pistol had jammed and Parvati pointed out that _um, Rae, maybe you could just be holding it wrong_ , and once again on the same day when she asked if anyone thought raptidons looked like cats when they slept, and absolutely no one knew what the fuck she meant, and once yet _again_ with her damned joke about _jet drag_ or _lag_ or whatever the fucking term was. And now, as ADA carried on a conversation with her in the confines of his bedroom as though either of them were fully clothed and decent in any sense of the word.

“ADA,” Rae says, sitting up so that the blush waves of her hair hang about her face. “Please don’t...please, if I’m in Max’s room, could you _please_ —”

“You would like me to respect your privacy,” the AI replies with an indifference that makes even Max smirk. “Alex used to make the same request in the same circumstances.”

“Jesus,” Rae mutters. “Yes. Please respect my privacy. _Our_ privacy.”

He’s almost ashamed at the way his stomach twists at the word _our_. It means nothing, anyway.

The lack of response from ADA indicates the message is received, and Rae resumes cleaning up, tossing the towel afterward into the heap that is Max’s discarded vestments. It’s always the _after_ that leaves him at a loss, and he waits for any sign to dictate what comes next. If she gets up, it’s over; she’ll pull on her black top and leggings and stick her hair back into a bun and leave with a simple _night, Max_ , and he’ll stay put, probably read until his eyelids grow heavy and he finally retires for the rest of the evening. If she reaches into the drawer under his mattress where she’s taken to storing Rizzo’s candy, then he has her for another twenty, thirty minutes. And if she says—

“God, it’s cold in here,” she mutters, not budging an inch.

_Then she’s staying._

He grins, tugging his pants back on, letting the suspenders hang idly from his waist as he straightens up. “Your clothes are just over here, Captain.” It’s little more than a tease. He knows she’s not getting up.

Just as expected, she scoffs. “Yeah, give her the tank top. That’ll warm her up,” she says sarcastically. “ _Vicar_.”

 _Right._ _Rae_.

“I’m afraid my wardrobe is lacking in smaller sizes, or else I’d offer you something.”

“ _Max_ ,” she presses. “Don’t tell me you don’t have anything other than those blue priest robes of yours to—”

“They’re _vestments_ , Rae,” he reminds her, pulling open a drawer to appease her. “I am a vicar, not a priest.” He doesn’t bother answering her question—the fact is that, other than a few items of more practical attire he’d purchased on one of their previous trips to the Groundbreaker, he has little else than his OSI-issued garments. _Except for…_

“What about this?” he asks, pulling an old tossball jersey from beneath the rest of his neatly folded clothes. The already dull brown and white stripes adorning the soft material have faded significantly since he’d last worn it, and yet he held onto it for all these years, a rare good memory from his time on Tartarus. It’s torn in a couple small places—in the stitching near the hem, and in the armpit of one sleeve—but it’s otherwise in decent condition.

“Is that…” Rae starts, propping herself up on her elbows for a closer look. “Yours?”

“No, I’m in the habit of holding onto the aging clothes of my enemies.”

Her smile flickers, and he rolls his eyes.

“I’m kidding. It’s mine, even if I haven’t worn it in...oh, I don’t even want to know how many years.” He tosses it her way, as he’d done with the towel before, and she catches it easily, sniffing it, never letting her gaze fall from him.

“Are you sure it’s clean?”

“Of course it’s—” He pauses. “You’re teasing me.”

She grins, pulling the sweater up and over her head. “Maybe. Damn, Max, this is _soft_.”

He has to smile at that. “Anything to keep our dear captain from freezing.”

“I’m touched.” Satisfied and (at least partially) clothed, she reclines again in his bed, shuffling down the mattress enough that she can prop her feet up on the walled interior. “If you want me out, just say so.”

“Would I have offered you a sentimental relic of my past to wear if I really wanted you to leave?” he asks, surprising himself with his own boldness. But _it’s harmless_ , he supposes; _nothing will come of it_.

“Sentimental?” she counters. “ _You?_ ”

“Touché.”

“Ah, so he _does_ speak French.”

He wrinkles his nose, unwilling to reply _how the fuck would I know that’s a French word?_ even though he thinks it, and finally he gives in, sitting back on the mattress beside her and lying back down.

They don’t cuddle. People in this sort of arrangement don’t _cuddle_. But they lie next to each other, comfortably, and she still doesn’t show any intention of leaving, and he doesn’t ask her to either, and _I think this is the longest time we’ve spent alone without fucking or talking._

Finally, she turns over, on her side. Facing him. And she leaves that precious safety net of a two-inch barrier between them, but she _looks_ at him. “You’re leaving after Fallbrook?”

His heart stops, for a moment.

 _Right_.

They’d only stopped in Stellar Bay a few times but his journey _will_ inevitably bring them to Fallbrook. He swallows, raises his eyebrows in a way that says _well, of course_ and _have you forgotten?_ even though the reminder of his earlier vow stings hard in a way he’d never expected. “Well,” he says, clearing his throat. “That is the plan. Yes.”

“And then you’re off to do your...scholarly vicarly things.”

He tilts his head toward her and nods, unable—or perhaps unwilling—to admit that he’s looking for something. Disappointment, maybe. _Sadness?_ Anything.

Instead, she stretches her arms back and smiles. “Not looking forward to the rest of Monarch,” she says, tone absolutely bright and unbothered, and he curses himself for even thinking—for even _hoping_ —she might miss him.

“No?” he manages, and she shakes her head, wrinkling her nose in a way he might consider _cute_ , were he perhaps a better and uninhibited man. “Ms. Ramnarim-Wentworth speaks quite...enthusiastically of the place.”

She snorts. “That’s what worries me.” Her ever-carefree smile flickers for just a moment before resuming, confident, unabashed. “And anyway, can’t you just call her Nyoka? Instead of…‘Ms. Ramnarim—’”

“Using her surname offers respect for the professional capacity in which we work together,” Max says nonchalantly.

She says nothing for a while, reaching up instead to play with the strings on the collar of her sweater. _His_ sweater. “Is that why you can always call me by my title?” she asks quietly.

 _No_ , he wants to answer. “Well, I—”

“It’s my birthday soon,” she says abruptly, rolling back over onto her back, changing the subject completely. “No one knows.”

He has to swallow down the _Rae_ he’d meant to speak. “I—well—no one…” He shakes his head. “No one? Why don’t you tell your friends?”

“Well, I just told one,” she answers, smile back and stronger than ever. “And I think I’ll tell the girls. I’m sure they’ll want to do something to celebrate.”

He laughs, half sincere and half nervous for whatever the ladies of the Unreliable— _or at least Ms. Ramnarim-Wentworth and Ms. Fenhill_ —will come up with. “I’m sure.” And then, “When exactly _is_ your birthday.”

She mumbles something incomprehensible, face half turns into his pillow.

“What?”

“I said, ‘tomorrow,’” she says, only a little louder, before she sits up, throwing her hair messily over her shoulder. “And in light of that, I think it’s probably time for me to—”

“You don’t have to, you know,” Max says, interrupting her this time, feeling the heat rush to his cheeks.

She raises her eyebrows, smiling curiously.

“I just mean,” he says, coughing into his hand, “if you wanted to...stay longer. I don’t mind. It wouldn’t bother me.”

She stares at him, long and hard. “It’s because you’re lonely without me around,” she decides, a teasing glint in her eye.

But she lies back down, and the sight of it makes him feel all the lighter. “No,” he counters, “but I know how much saving me from my perceived loneliness boosts your ego, Captain. Consider it an early birthday present.”

She laughs, tucking her toes under the bunched-up sheets at the foot of his bed. “So when is _your_ birthday, Max?”

He feels the corners of his lips turn up in a smile. “It passed already. Shortly before you showed up in Edgewater.”

She hums in response, taking her time. “And how old did you turn?”

He raises a wary eyebrow at her.

“You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want.”

“Oh, thank you for the permission not to answer your invasive question. I appreciate it.”

“In _vas_ ive?” she echoes, an incredulous grin growing on her face. “I can fuck you but I can’t ask how old you are? I can _sleep_ in your _bed_ but I can’t ask how old you are?” She giggles. “Max, just kick me out if I’m being too in—”

“No,” he laughs, although he turns serious quickly. “No. Stay.”

She smiles, sharking her head. “Goodnight, Max,” she laughs under her breath, turning over.

He smiles weakly. “Goodnight, Captain.”

* * *

“Max?”

He places his book on the little table abruptly, flipping open his watch.

_Ah._

It _is_ late. Late enough that the rustle of boots and voices coming from below deck of the ship shouldn’t surprise him. After all, they’d left _hours_ earlier—Rae and Ellie and Nyoka and Parvati—all to celebrate Rae’s birthday at the Lost Hope.

“ _Max!_ ”

He gets up from his chair, wondering whether it’s even worth venturing out of his room.

“Shut _up_ , Rae!” he hears Ellie giggle from the kitchen. “He’s probably sleeping. Old people go to bed really—”

“He’s not a fucking _geriatric_ —”

“ _Shhhh!_ ”

Despite the distinct feeling that _I’m definitely going to regret this_ , he steps out of his cabin through the already-open door and walks carefully down the hall, following the sounds of whispers and giggles and crinkling snack wrappers until he arrives in the kitchen, where none other than Rae is sitting on the table, lipstick smudged, cheeks rosy, hair tousled, a bag of Deep Fried Cysty-Bits in her hands and a winning smile on her face. Nyoka sits on the countertop across from her, Ellie in a backwards-turned chair between them.

None of them seem to notice him walk in.

“Did you have a good—”

Rae literally drops the bag, Cysty-Bits raining onto the floor. “ _Max!_ ”

“Oh boy,” Ellie whispers, and Nyoka just groans.

“They said you were sleeping,” she exclaims, slipping—and nearly falling—off the table clumsily.

“I wasn’t.”

“—but I wanted to say hi to you when we got back—”

“Hi,” he obliges her.

“—we had the _best_ time—”

Her excitement’s infectious. He can’t help but smile.

“—and we danced—”

“And she kissed just about everyone at the bar,” Nyoka adds, rolling her eyes, and Ellie punches her in the shoulder.

“It’s her _birthday_! Everyone wants to kiss a birthday girl.”

He feels a small twinge of... _something_...in his chest, but he brushes it aside. _Ellie’s right_ , he decides firmly, _it_ is _her birthday_ and _this whole thing between us means nothing anyway_ and—

“—and I got _birthday_ kisses,” Rae continues, and he forces a smile again.

“So I’ve heard.”

Nyoka snorts. “And yet _all_ she could talk about was coming home and getting one from—”

“Ny- _oka_!”

“And where,” Max starts, glad a little for the trio’s drunkenness if only because they ignore the way his face turns red, “is Parvati?”

Rae shrugs, but Ellie nods toward the far end of the hall. “Oh, she went _straight_ to bed when we got back. And in fact, I think I’m about to do the same.”

“Me too,” Nyoka says, tipping the final crumbs of a bag of Tileritos into her mouth. “And, uh. Someone should make sure Rae gets down the stairs without breaking an ankle too.” She and Ellie stare pointedly at him.

Rae doesn’t seem bothered at all.

He feels himself turn redder. “Well, I hate to disappoint—”

“Really, Vicky?” Ellie asks, slipping past him toward her room. “Because I think disappointing is your favorite pastime.”

“Are you—Ms. Fenhill, I…”

Nyoka laughs, following Ellie down the hall.

“Ms. Ramnarin-Wentworth, get your—get back—you can’t just—”

“Can’t we?” Nyoka chuckles, and just as quickly as they’d sped past him, two doors slam shut, leaving him in the kitchen with Rae, whose rosy cheeks were beginning to lose their flush in favor of sheer exhaustion. And possibly something else.

He sighs. “You need to get to bed,” he mutters, and she leans back against the table, hands squeezing the edges.

“Max, will you kiss me?”

He runs his fingers through his hair tiredly, coming up beside her at the table, and she looks up at him hopefully. He shakes his head, ignoring the frown he gets in response. “No. You’re pretty fucking drunk.”

“Please, Max? It’s my birthday.”

“It _is_ your birthday,” he agrees, taking one of her arms over his shoulder and leading her—or at least, _trying_ to lead her—out of the kitchen and down to her bedroom. “And you’re also my captain. And I’m also a vicar.”

“That didn’t stop you yesterday,” she points out as they walk, or least, as he walks, and she follows. “Or the day before. Or the day before, or…”

When they reach the stairs, he frowns. She’s not getting down without help—even with him to lean on. He could offer his room—but _no, better not give her any ideas_.

“ _Max_.”

 _Fine_. Maybe he can distract her.

“You enjoyed your party, then?” he asks, picking her up gently off the floor, and instantly her arms are hooked around his neck, her legs wrapped clumsily around his waist. “It sounded like...well, I’m sure you had fun, if there were as many young men and women vying for your attention as Ellie and Nyoka had boasted.”

He doesn’t know what he’d said wrong. _Minutes_ ago she’d been grinning, giggling as the girls had recounted her exploits from that night. _I got birthday kisses!_ were her exact words, her excited words. Now, the smile is gone from her face. Her hold around his shoulders grows limp.

“No.”

They’re in her quarters now. He’s almost afraid to put her down.

“No?”

“No.”

“But I thought—”

“I just wanted to be around people,” she says, words spilling from her mouth now. She’s rambling, but he’s not quite sure how to stop her (or if he should at all, to which a voice inside him steps in with a firm _no_ ). “I just wanted t-to be with people because it’s...it’s my birthday and all I’ve felt since I woke up in this fucking colony is...” She swallows, and carefully, gently, he lets her down at her bunk. “Alone. But—”

“Rae—”

“But sometimes it doesn’t matter how many people I’m with, I just, I just, I feel _empty_ and I feel hollow and it hurts and I can’t fix it and—”

“Rae, I didn’t mean to—”

“—and I can't tell Ellie, or Nyoka, o-or Parvati or Felix. They won’t understand.” She takes her shirt sleeve and wipes furiously at her eyes, leaving smudges of makeup and remnants of tears in her wake.

He frowns. “Well, you _don’t_ know that,” he offers slowly—a sorry attempt at making her feel better—and she shakes her head.

“I do. Because they like being around me. I don’t want to...to not be the me that they like.”

His heart sinks. “Rae—”

“And you,” she mutters. “I don’t even know if you...if you _actually_ like me. Or if you will now that I’ve told you all this. Or if it even matters since you’ll be gone soon—”

“I look forward to your company every night, you know,” he says truthfully, feeling his heart in his throat.

“You don’t have to _say_ that.”

 _No_ , he knows. He doesn’t. _But it’s the truth_.

“But you don’t even..” she says hopelessly. “You won’t even…”

Carefully, he cups her chin, damp from tears and warm with the lingering heat of the festivities now behind her, and he leans in, kissing her just once, softly, with a patience he’s never offered before, with a tenderness he’s not convinced he knew he had in him. “I do,” he says quietly, pulling away from her and standing up again. It’s not a conversation for now, if ever. “Goodnight, Rae. Happy birthday.”

She says nothing.

“Sleep well.”

As he steps out of her room, he reflects, incredulously, that it was Rae who accused _him_ of being so isolated, who insisted that he needed her company, or _someone’s_ company. That he was the sad, lonely person.

He closes the door quietly behind him.

_It takes one to know one._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry it's been so long since my first chapter! i kind of...never go this long without updating a fic. but a lot has been going on lately. anyway. check me out on tumblr, if you like--my side blog that i post fic to is mainly dragon age, but my [main blog](https://abinchofsalt.tumblr.com/) posts a lot of other games/etc. :)


	3. Parting Ways

They’d come to Monarch once before, to Stellar Bay, back when they’d first met Nyoka and though they’d spent a few days on the planet then, he’d learned only two things: that it was fucking hot, and that it was fucking dusty. When they return after weeks spent on the Groundbreaker and in Terra 2 and at every Law-forsaken hole in a rock in between, the planet seems more or less the same. And after restocking supplies, delegating chores to the rest of the crew, and rounding up Nyoka as their guide, once they leave the safety ( _if you can call it that_ ) of Stellar Bay, he’s found those truths to remain constant.

It’s fucking hot. And it’s fucking dusty.

And Rae, for all her sly glances and fleeting smiles and every _barely there_ brush of her fingers against his when they walk along the neverending dust-covered road, never _once_ mentions the night of her birthday. Nor had she during the rest of their stay on the Groundbreaker, or their excursions back to the outskirts of Edgewater or even during their drop-in on the cramped excuse of a comms station back on Relay GB-23. They carry on—business as usual, or at least, business as before. She slips into his cabin when the others are asleep or sometimes when they’re not—when she’s just _feeling bored, Max_ or _could use something fun to do, Max_ or any other code for what she’s really looking for, which is a nice, hard, and no-strings-attached fuck, and how can he complain? It’s what he agreed to, and _Law, is it good._

But it’s still like any words shared between them that night were never spoken.

Like he’d never kissed her like _that_.

And yet they both remember it. He knows that much.

 _Nope. She’s_ choosing _not to bring it up_. And as they near their destination— _his_ destination, the end of their road together, the postscript in what should have been the culmination of _years_ of searching, he can’t pretend he doesn’t know why.

They make camp along the way in dilapidated prefab pods, empty structures abandoned by marauders (whether they’d been pushed from the premises months before by raptidons and mantiqueens or minutes before by their own guns) and shabby and stale smelling and otherwise quite fine places to spend the night. It’s only there that they resume their _affair_ , if Max can call it that (he reminds himself often enough that _arrangement_ is the impartial term for such a relationship) and he’s wary of getting into anything out in the Monarch wilds at first but _Nyoka already knows about us_ Rae mutters and _I already know about you two_ Nyoka says with an eye roll just seconds later, and she makes a loud show of exiting to go hunt some mantisaurs.

So they fuck. Quick and dirty, in and out, bent over a countertop strewn with empty cigarette boxes and Algae Lager bottles, off in a worn mattress in some sorry colonist’s old bed, up against a wall or a doorframe. Wherever’s most convenient, no more time spent among the decaying marauder corpses and expired saltuna stench than necessary. And when it’s done, it’s _done_.

She doesn’t linger.

She can’t anyway, not when they have places to be and Nyoka in tow. But he can still taste her on the tip of his tongue and his lips as they resume their camp, resume their _normalcy_ , still smell her lingering on his clothes long after her fingers have released the plain white cloth of his undershirt and let him go. It shouldn’t bother him. _It doesn’t bother me_ , he tells himself; in fact, it’s exactly what he’d agreed to. But he can still taste her. And he can still smell her. And he can still hear the words they’ve left unsaid about that night ringing in his mind where they’re destined to stay. _For now_.

 _Forever_.

It’s evening when they finally arrive. Large solid steel outer walls obscure the settlement within but a rusted sign reading FALLBROOK in flickering bulbs only half of which seem to function tell them they’ve reached their destination.

“Fucking finally,” mutters Nyoka, cracking her shoulders one at a time before rolling up and down on her heels, tired.

Rae stands still before the town, and none of them make the first move to enter the gates.

Max raises his eyebrows. “You seem a bit impatient now that we’re here, Ms. Ramnarim-Wentworth. For someone so fond of the Monarch wilderness.”

“I _am_ fond of it,” Nyoka retorts. “When I’m not sharing it with you two mopey losers.”

Max _tuts_. “Call me what you will, but that’s hardly a term fitting for our captain.” He glances at Rae, _for what?_ he’s unsure, but she offers no smile in return for his defense of her.

“This is it,” she says simply.

Nyoka shrugs, cracking a smile at last. “Sub-light scum, C&P scum. Scum. If you need it, you’ll find it here.”

Rae flashes a tight, joyless smile. “Your scholar’s here,” she says coolly, looking back at him at last.

The very thought of it burns something deep inside of him, and he taps the outside of his pocket where the book lies beneath just once, just once with a finger that’s beginning to itch in a way he hasn’t felt in some time. He nods. “That he is, Captain.”

She wrinkles her nose at the title.

 _Rae_ , he should’ve said. But he doesn’t bother correcting himself. Not when he’s this close. _Not when I’ve come this far, only to—_

“Then don’t let me get in your way, Vicar,” she says with another smile he sees right through.

 _Right_.

He’s told her, before, that this is the end.

 _She thinks this is where we part ways_ , that this is where he continues with his research with no further need of the Unreliable or its captain. It’s not a lie, of course.

It’s just...withholding parts of the truth.

“Never,” he says with an equally uncomfortable grin, taking the first step toward the gates.

He’s never been to Fallbrook before, but it’s not quite what he’d expected. Or at least, not what he’d expected of the place he’d eventually meet Reginald Chaney once again. Nyoka had said it’s _scum_ , but if she’s telling the truth, _and she has no reason not to_ , it’s not the kind of scum he’s accustomed to. Not the sort of scum where he and Chaney had first crossed paths years ago. It’s shady, both in a literal and figurative sense, the plant matter and the rock formations providing natural cover to the center of the town, and as the three of them make their way among the quietly buzzing storefronts and residences, their path is lit by strings of bulbs hanging crisscrossed over the street, roof to roof. It’s _alive_ , especially compared Stellar Bay, even in spite of how _small_ the town seems, and more than that, it lacks the lingering stench of ship fuel and factory smoke that hangs about the port like a fog. The air is fresher, if still dusty. And if he ignores the bustle of inhabitants passing by, he thinks he can hear the quiet trickles of running water.

He glances at Rae as they walk—as if she might look back at him for once, instead of putting on a stoic face like she had every day ( _and night_ ) of their travels on Monarch. _No_ , she continues to stare straight ahead as they emerge from the rocky arch, back into the hazy sunlight in the back of the town. Where there were fences lining the entrance, cliffs far too jagged to scale create a natural enclosure in the back. And there’s a waterfall and a brook— _that’s where the sound was coming from_ , he notes, eyes following the trail of water out to another clearing, tucked away, at the end of which a thin trail of fire smoke emerges from, and he narrows his eyes.

“There’s the landing pad,” Rae mutters, and his attention snaps back to her and the massive structure before them at the edge of the settlement. “I’d better get that sorted out, have ADA get the ship over here before we do anything. Nyoka—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll come.”

Rae’s gaze rests on Max next, and he feels a fleeting pull toward her—to keep following, even when _this is where we part ways_. “Max, do you—”

“I’d rather keep wandering,” he interrupts her. It’s like ripping off a bandage—better not to let this... _whatever we have_...carry on any longer than necessary, hold him back, hold _her_ back.

She shrugs, expression unreadable. “Of course. You need to find your scholar.”

“Right,” he replies, fixing the collar of his vestments. “Yes, exactly.”

He doesn’t wait for her to make for the landing pad—no, he turns away first, fastest, _like ripping off a bandage_ , choosing instead to follow along the brook. It seems arbitrary, but _then again, nothing is arbitrary—all part of the Grand Plan_ , he reminds himself, and the more steps he takes _away_ from Rae, the more he walks with confidence, with purpose. Because he _is_ here for something—someone—after all, and Law forbid he let his years of research, all of his efforts, be in vain. _No_. This is important.

_All part of the Plan._

And because the Plan has never led him astray before, he finds his instincts were right when he reaches the end of the brook, or at least where the water meets the steel walls lining the perimeter of the town, where the small group of workers stand idly, and—

“V-Vicar Max?”

He grimaces. And then, he _grins_.

“Well, well,” he chuckles, turning around slowly to find Reginald Chaney before him. _Reginald fucking Chaney_. Years apart and he hasn’t changed at all—same greasy scarred face as before, same pathetic submission written all over his face as he looks him over, vision clouding with black and red until it might as well be just the two of them, because all he sees is him. _Chaney_.

“I—” the man stutters as Max rolls up his sleeves carefully, methodically. Neatly. “I didn’t know you were in Fallbrook. O-or on Monarch. Or—”

“Well, you know now,” Max says, cracking his knuckles.

“Well...yes, you—here you are.”

Max pulls back, hand all in a fist before Chaney can even register just _exactly_ what his intentions are. He cocks his head to the side just once, _mocking_ him. “Here I am,” he echoes.

And then he connects.

The rest of the workers scatter as soon as Chaney takes the first blow, falling into the watery pebbles and rocks beneath their feet. “Oh, Law, I—” Chaney groans, grasping for purchase but the gravel is loose, any larger rocks too slippery, and Max is too fast on his feet while he scrambles in the brook.

“You know why I’m here?” Max asks before hitting him again.

“Ah!” Chaney cries out. “No! I mean—yes, I—Law—”

“The Law isn’t saving you this time,” Max says smugly. _It’s all too easy_.

 _It’s all part of the Plan_.

He bends down quickly to grab Chaney by the burnt orange (now red-splattered) fabric of his jacket. “Do you _know_ why I’m here, you lying, cheating, parasitic—”

“Max?”

Immediately, he pauses.

 _Rae_.

He almost turns around. Almost.

“Max—”

Instead, he throws another punch. Right in the fucking jaw, white knuckles painted red with blood all over again. He thinks he hears a crack when he hits—and if it weren’t for the sheer rage pulsing in his ears, he might know for sure. It feels hot. It feels blinding.

It feels _good_.

He straightens up, one fist reeling back again and the other tight around the collar of Chaney’s jacket, ready to go again, and again, _as many times as this fucking moron needs to get it through his head that_ —

“What the fuck is going on?” Rae yells, grabbing his wrist and yanking him back.

He might find it boggling, any other time—his hands and sleeves are covered in blood and she’s holding onto him like she doesn’t know (or maybe doesn’t _believe_ ) what he’s capable of. But he’s tired of lying. Tired of being fucking _nice_.

She _should_ know.

“What the fuck,” she says through gritted teeth, fingers tight around the cuff of his shirt (and even then he knows he could pull away easily, if he wants), “are you doing, Max?”

He lets go of Chaney’s jacket—just for a moment—to wipe the speckled blood off his face before grabbing the man _again_ , like the stupid rat he is, too weak to run away and too easy to pin down, because he can.

Even Rae can’t stop him now as she loses her grip on his arm.

He scoffs. “It doesn’t concern you, Captain.”

Her voice is like ice when she replies. “It concerns me if I can’t let you out of my sight without you beating a fucking _stranger_ to a pulp. Vicar.”

He just laughs. _Laughs_.

“I don’t think this guy’s a stranger, Cap,” Nyoka mutters.

He spits at the ground at Chaney’s feet, releasing the man once more, and the miserable fool scrambles backward in the dirt, clutching his jaw in pain. “He’s not,” he growls. “I know him. From Tartarus.”

Nyoka lets out a low whistle. “Damn Max,” she chuckles, oblivious to the way Rae’s eyes bore into him, livid. “I didn’t know you did time.”

“I may have neglected to mention it,” Max replies, suppressing the tug of guilt he feels in his gut. _It got you this far_ , he reminds himself. _It had to be done_.

Chaney coughs, spitting up blood and maybe a tooth or two. “We kn-knew each other, once, but that was a long time ago, Vicar—”

“Shut up,” Max hisses. “You lied, you worthless little—”

“Are you going to tell me what the fuck this is about?” Rae demands, pulling him backward by the sleeve again.

He resists.

“ _Max!_ ” she hisses, and finally, he relents. Stops fighting. She pulls at his vestments, pulling him to look her in the eye and find the pleading look there flashing once before returning to anger, confusion. “I thought I was taking you here to see a _scholar_.”

His face is hot, adrenaline still running through his veins when he flexes his blood-slick fingers again, torn between his captain and his _lying, rotten, son of a…_ He shakes his head vigorously. “I was never coming to see a scholar,” he spits, tearing his eyes from hers to glare at Chaney again. “ _This_ is the fucking weasel who told me about that book.”

“The book,” she repeats, and he nods. “The book that I got for you. That was in French.”

“Yes the _French_ ,” Max snaps. “The fucking French. Something you conveniently forgot to mention all those years ago, _Reggie_ —sending me on a fucking _rapt_ chase for something that _I can’t even use_!”

The man sputters. “I-I—no, you don’t understand, I can m-make this right, Vicar Max, I..” He looks desperately between Max and Rae, who crosses her arms, waiting.

Waiting on _him_.

“Yeah?” Max asks. “It’s been _years_. What do you think you could possibly do now to make up for the time—for the _years_ —that I wasted because of you?”

“The book—”

“That book is _worthless_!” Max shouts.

Chaney shakes his head wildly. “No! No! It’s—the book, I know who stole it in the first place! Some crazy hermit lady on Scylla, I swear!”

Max scowls. “And why would I believe that?”

“Max,” mutters Rae, and he growls.

“Fine. Say I believe you. I’m going to go to Scylla and find this woman?”

“Yes, I _swear_ —”

“And she’s going to be able to translate the book for me?”

Chaney presses his hands over his bloody nose, exasperated. “Yes, I—you have to believe me, I—”

“Fine,” Max grunts, and Chaney stares at him, dumbfounded.

“I-is that it?” he asks in disbelief. “Can I—can I go?”

Max turns back to Rae, deferring, finally, to her judgment.

But no verdict comes. “What do you think, Vicar?” she asks instead, even toned but her choice of words doesn’t slip past him.

 _Vicar_.

He frowns. “Ideally? I’d like to pummel this guy. Severely.”

Her eyes go cold. Empty. _Closed off_. “I understand.”

“You—wait, you do?”

“Yes,” she replies, and behind her back, Nyoka grimaces, shaking her head at him. “Carry on, Max. Come back to the ship when you’re ready. Or actually, don’t. This was where we were supposed to part ways, wasn’t it?”

“Well, I—”

“What?” she snaps. “You need a ride to Scylla now? And what else can I do for you, while I’m at it?”

He doesn’t know what to say, or he’s too slow to say it, and his silence is answer enough. She turns around, back up the brook and to the landing pad, Nyoka following behind, and suddenly the waves of anger wash over him and away as the world seems almost to return to normal, and his breathing evens out, and his tunnel vision gives way to the vibrant colors of Monarch rock and the blue stream running around his boots.

“P-please, Vicar Max, I—”

“You,” Max grumbles, nearly having forgotten that Chaney was still there. “If you’re lying—if you’re lying to me again, _Reggie_ , you’d better fucking hope I never find you a second time.”

And he leaves him. He _leaves_ him.

He doesn’t wait to hear the babbling apologies or promises Chaney continues to make even after he’s long ahead of him, after he’s abandoned his original plan and left the man still at the brook’s edge where the water meets the steel fencing. Where minutes before he’d felt anger, _rage_ , now he only feels exhaustion. And uncertainty, he might even call it _anxiousness_ if he didn’t have the ever-lingering reminder of the Plan grounding him in the back of his mind.

But _Rae_. The ever unexpected part of his Plan.

He’s not sure even he’s even welcome aboard the Unreliable now, but it’s where his feet carry him anyway—back to the bank of the brook, across the way, up to the landing pad and up the metal steps to the ship. His hands feel week and shaky when he reaches for the door and pushes it open, pushes through the airlock.

There’s no one in the main bay, but he knows her well enough now to go not to her quarters, but to the control room. Because _even without a door_ , she’d joked to him once, _there’s a closed-door policy_.

 _So much for that_ , he thinks.

She’s alone in her chair, ADA flickering on the screen, but neither of them are speaking. Instead, she’s hugged her knees into her chest, chin resting atop them, staring blankly at the keys and control panels in front of her.

“Rae…” he says softly.

Her shoulders tense, and she drops her feet back to the floor. “Don’t.”

“I’m s—”

She spins her chair around so fast that Max nearly steps backward and out of the room again. “What the _fuck_ was that?” she demands, flexing her fingers once before peeling off her gloves.

It’s only now that he notices the blood on them—Chaney’s, of course, transferred from his own clothes when she’d reached for him. _Fuck._ He swallows. “I—I know that seemed like—”

“What did it seem like, Max?” she asks, _laughing_ , almost in disbelief. “Tell me. Justify it.”

He licks his lips, running his own fingers—thick and sticky with the same blood, _Chaney’s blood_ —through his hair. Anytime else and he’d be unapologetic. Uncaring. Anyone else and he’d be _proud_ , boasting, shameless. Not this time. _Not with Rae_. “I…” he tries again; he’s unaccustomed to humility but he _tries_. “I haven’t been forthright with you.”

She scoffs. “Yeah, you can start with that.”

“You...obviously were not aware you’ve been traveling with an ex-con.”

“‘An ex-con’?” she repeats. “I didn’t know I was traveling with a _fucking time bomb_!”

“W-well, I—”

“Could you do _that_ ,” she interrupts him, jabbing her finger out to the airlock, out to the world outside and the carnage they’d— _he’d_ —left in their trail, “to just anyone? Anyone else? To me?”

“Well, no— _you_ wouldn’t have lied to me like—”

“That’s wasn’t the _question_ , Max!” she cries. “You just—he— _you_ —”

“You’ve never objected to my temper when it works in your favor,” he reminds her darkly, even if he regrets the words the moment they leave his mouth.

She ignores him. “And it’s not just that. Max, you _lied_ to me! How can you go around pissed off to the point of _violently_ beating someone for lying to you when this _whole_ time you’ve been lying to _me_?”

“What did you want me to say?” he asks, exasperated. “‘Captain, I need us to head to Fallbrook so I can beat the shit out of a man I know from prison’?”

“At least I would’ve known your intentions,” she snaps.

He sighs, closing his eyes. “I know.”

“You know,” she repeats.

“Yes, I—I’m not proud. I’m sorry.”

“Good,” she says icily. “I’m so glad you’re not proud of being a fucking liar and taking advantage of my trust and my fee—” She stops herself.

He tries again. “I’m sorry. For letting my...violent enthusiasm get the best of me.”

She scoffs. “You’re not sorry you did it. You’re just sorry that I caught you.”

‘Yes,” he agrees, and she looks back at him, confused. “The last thing I wanted was for you to become entangled in...that. But. Thank you. For stopping me.”

She stares at him coldly. “I didn’t _stop_ you from doing anything.”

“Not in your actions, maybe. But I stopped. Because of you.”

She shakes her head, incredulous, before turning her chair around again, and he’s unsure of whether he should leave or stay when she speaks to him again. “You need to go to Scylla?” she asks coldly. “Fine. Felix has already asked if we could skip out there at some point anyway.”

His heart tugs at him, his stomach feels hollow. “I don’t want to impose if—”

“You’re not imposing,” she interrupts, even if she won’t turn around. “You’ve never _imposed_ , Vicar. And in the future, I’ll make sure not to impose on you either.”

“I..” he sputters. “Captain, you’ve never—”

“I have,” she says, cutting him off. Even from behind, he can see her shaking her head. “Is that all I am to you, Max? An easy fuck and a free ride to the next planet?”

“Rae…”

“Don’t answer that,” she decides. “You didn’t come along to help me or be my friend or anything else. You tried to mind your own business and keep to yourself. It should have been clear to me from the start. I’m just...sorry I ever thought otherwise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ADA play despacito


	4. The Mantiqueen's Nest

He’s acted abysmally to her and she wants nothing to do with him and he can’t find it in himself to seek her out either and yet he can’t close the door to his cabin once he’s there, heart still pulsing, breath slowly evening out. No. He leaves it ajar. For what, he’s unsure. But it stays open.

And he decides, finally, that there are two options one can take in this sort of scenario, those being either to sit quietly and out of the way and think upon what he’s done or leave.

He’s practicing the former and considering the latter when he hears a door slam somewhere farther down the hall.

Rae, he assumes, though the shuffling of every crew member save for himself down the corridor and down the stairs confirms his guess. There are hushed whispers, each growing in volume while who he assumes are Felix, Nyoka, and Ellie argue over who should knock on the door first, all the while the audible but unintelligible hum of ADA’s voice sounds distantly under their words. Finally, the arguing ceases, and a single voice echoes enough that he can hear it in his room.

“Um...Captain?”

And with that, he hears her door click open. He supposes no one with a moral compass of any kind can really _ignore_ Parvati.

The others disperse, shuffling down the hall in heavy silence permeated only by an unsympathetic _good going, Vicky!_ from none other than Ellie as she passes his cabin by on her way to the kitchen.

He says nothing, whether for his determination not to satisfy her taunting or because deep down he _knows_ what he’s done is beyond him. Instead, he reaches into the drawer under his bed, rummaging past Rae’s stash of chocolate bars, past her worn and borrowed novellas ( _stolen?_ he wonders, pushing the thought from his mind) until his fingertips brush against the cool cardboard carton of cigarettes he hasn’t opened since arriving on the Unreliable.

_Good._

He pulls one from the carton. Ellie and Nyoka’s disappointed voices carry down the hall from the kitchen. Mumbled, fuzzy. They know he doesn’t close his door.

_Not good._

He hasn’t had a smoke in a while but he still keeps a lighter in the pocket of his vestments, removing it, replacing it every time he changes clothes.

 _Better_.

He sighs, the heaviness in his limbs catching up to him finally— _arms are starting to tighten now_ and _starting to ache_ and _maybe you’re just getting old_ but _no_ , he thinks, rolls them evenly, _just muscles you haven’t used in a while_. When he finds himself sufficiently stretched, or at least as loosened up as he’s going to get for now, he leans back in his chair again. The corners of his thumb nail are still crusty with the deep brown of dried blood when he flicks his lighter once, twice, _third time’s the charm_ and the acrid smell of burning tobacco fills his nose before he even brings the cigarette to his lips but when he does, _ah. There we go_.

He’s still resigned to waiting.

But at least he’s got a cigarette, and _there may be a spot of whiskey left, too_.

He could just leave. Rae was right—there are plenty of ships in and out of Stellar Bay. Someone has to be going to Scylla eventually. And she’d said he never _imposed_ on her but he knew it in the tone of her voice even if she _hadn’t_ turned around to look at him. Years of preaching and listening to well-rehearsed tragedies some of the Order might call _confession_ taught him nothing if not that one’s words rarely match one’s feelings, and it’s always the tone that gave it away.

And he _knows_ Rae.

Enough to know that she was lying when she said he’d never imposed, or at the very least that if he’d never imposed on her before, he certainly is now.

 _Well, there_ , he supposes. Leaving. _A kindness to the both of us_. He brushes away the very thought that this is the _easy_ way out— _it’s not easy, just efficient_ , and the Law stands for nothing if not efficiency.

So he’ll leave.

He’s about to reach for the bottle on his desk when the door at the end of the hall clicks open again, and Parvati murmurs something in a soft voice again as she had before.

“That was, uh. Harsh. Mr. Vicar, sir.”

He takes another drag, holds it in methodically, and lets it out in an even, practiced smoke ring. “It is who I am, Miss Holcomb,” he says tersely. Even if he does feel a tinge of regret behind his cold green eyes.

“Right. But the captain…”

 _I know_.

“...She’s just. Aw, Vicar, I don’t know what happened down there exactly—other than what Nyoka told us when she got in—but she seems mighty upset.”

“Mhm.”

“Like, _mighty_ —”

“Yes, Miss Holcomb, I don’t doubt the entire ship if not several Fallbrook dock workers could hear how angry she was.”

“Angry?” Parvati repeats, tilting her head. “Well, I don’t know if…”

“And she has every right to be. I lied. I’ve been here for my own personal reasons. I’ve taken advantage of her hospitality as a means to an end. And I very enthusiastically engaged in...aggressive pursuit of a former acquaintance, on her watch. She is—”

“—sad, sir,” Parvati interrupts him. “Not angry. Sad.”

He stops abruptly, jaw open, rethinking the words they’d exchanged in the control room, the look on her face before she’d turned away from him completely. “Well, I—”

“Are you gonna leave now?”

He draws his lips into a thin line, looking around at his belongings, at the bloodied vestments he’d peeled off into a heap on his floor, at the still-folded shirt he’d yet to put on anyway. “Of course not,” he says stiffly.

For that, she grants him a smile, if a small one. “I’m glad to hear that, Vicar.”

He tries to smile. He knows it comes out as more of a grimace than anything else.

“You do make her happy,” she adds. “Most of the time.”

“I don’t—I’m not trying to—”

“I think she enjoys the company, for whatever it’s worth.”

 _Enjoyed_ , he wants to say, with emphasis on the past tense. _For whatever it’s worth._

The door at the end of the hall is thrown open again, loud enough to carry back into his room, and any thought of past enjoyment of any kind is lost when he hears Rae’s boots stomp across the cold metal flooring of the ship, hears her mutter something coldly to ADA, or whoever.

He closes his eyes. _Leaving would be easier_. But when he opens them again, Parvati is still there. And now, so is Ellie.

“Nice job, Vicky,” she drawls, rolling her eyes. “Rae’s gone out to go ‘walk it off,’ or whatever. Thanks to you.”

He opens his mouth dumbly, looking between the doctor and Parvati, who appears, to his relief, similarly confused. “To what?”

“To walk it off,” Ellie repeats. “Get some air. I don’t know. Said she wanted time to think. I guess she’s gone out to the wilds.” She cracked her knuckles, staring idly at her fingernails.

“Gone _where_?” he asks, running his hand through his hair weakly.

“To the—”

“For _fuck’s_ —”

He rises abruptly, chair legs scraping noisily against the floor and almost toppling over altogether as he reaches for his shirt, his shotgun.

“Wait...Vicky...don’t tell me—”

“You’re telling me Rae went out there _alone_?” he demands, trying to quell the growing anger inside of him. “To the fucking Monarch wilderness, on a whim?”

“Listen—”

“And you didn’t stop her?”

“She knows what she’s doing,” Ellie says defensively, but Parvati, _bless her_ , looks apprehensive.

“I dunno,” she says tentatively. “Rae isn’t...she isn’t exactly…”

A crop of curly pink hair appears behind her, and Nyoka clears her throat. “If you’re trying to find a nice way to say Cap’s not a good shot, don’t bother. We all know it’s true.”

“Ladies, please,” Max says gruffly, because _I’ve had enough_ and _standing here talking isn’t going to get anything done_. The three part quickly when they see he means it—and he _does_ , gripping his shotgun with white knuckles because if he doesn’t he might send his fist through a fucking wall.

Only Felix tries to stop him before he reaches the airlock, but by then, the boy’s too late anyway. He throws the door open to the burnt orange haze of Fallbrook and grumbles something about kids staying out of adult business and follows her, wherever she’s gone, because even if nothing has happened yet _she’s alone_ , and _she’s sad_ , and perhaps most significantly, _this is mantisaur country._

He’s not far outside the town limits when he spots her (or rather _hears_ her, at least at first), ambling about in the road along an abandoned marauder camp and kicking an empty saltuna can around as if the noise of it all isn’t a surefire way to attracts rapts, or _worse_ , mantisaurs.

He’s almost reached her when she spins around abruptly, pulling her pistol and pointing it directly at him.

Her brow relaxes, even if the frown on her lips seems to grow when she sees it’s him. But her eyes are red, and her cheeks blotchy. “Oh,” is all she can manage, slipping her gun back into the holster at her hip..

 _Oh._ He swallows. “Captain.”

She turns around again, wandering off the road and into the uneven, sandy terrain. “I came out here to be alone, Vicar.”

He steps after her, keeping a careful distance. “I understand that,” he replies evenly, “but the Monarch wilderness isn’t exactly the safest place for solitude.

“I’m willing to take my chances.”

“ _Rae_ —”

“Why did _you_ come after me?” she huffs, stepping over the rocks aimlessly. “I mean...why are you following me?

“Tell me to stop, and I will,” he replies. Almost fondly.

She grumbles something under her breath.

“I was...thinking of leaving,” he continues, finding his footing and following behind, and that’s when she stops. “After our conversation this afternoon, I thought it might be best.”

She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even turn around.

He clears his throat. “Until I spoke with Miss Holcomb.”

She continues walking now, to _where_ he still can’t register, but he follows along anyway, shepherd turned sheep, for her.

 _Again, somehow_.

“Listen, Parvati—”

“—is a very good friend,” he finishes, slipping off the rocks and back to the dusty ground after her. “If your feelings are as she said, I would caution against considering it a betrayal of your trust.” He wipes his brow briefly, but she doesn’t let up, doesn’t slow down, and _I can’t just_ lose _her._ “I know I angered you,” he admits for the second time that day. “I’ve said as much, and you confirmed so yourself. But I apologize if I’ve hurt you as well.”

She’s quiet for a moment. She doesn’t stop walking, but she’s slowed down, and he slows behind her too.

 _Law forbid I dare catch_ up _to her_.

“You don’t owe me an apology for that,” she says finally. “For misleading myself, the fault and apologies owed are my own.”

“For…” he repeats, thinking her words over in his head. “But you—”

“Don’t worry about it, Vicar,” she says coldly.

He purses his lips, clears his throat. “If the...companionship...that we found together is as unimportant to you as you seem to be implying, then by all means, I can follow through with my earlier plans. To leave, that is. But after speaking with Parvati—”

“I may have confided in Parvati, but she isn’t the ambassador to my personal feelings,” Rae snaps. “What’s done is done. If you want to travel to Scylla with us, that’s fine with me. If you wish to leave and find your own way, that’s fine with me too.” She looks at him, briefly, averting her eyes almost instantly when they make eye contact. “Really, Vicar, I’m..” She swallows, wipes her brow. “...indifferent. Just...do what you want.”

He’s trying to think of a polite way to say _well you don’t fucking_ sound _indifferent_ when a movement behind her stops him in his tracks, and he stares, mouth open, squinting. _A fucking mantiqueen_. How he’d missed it—how _either_ of them had missed it before is beyond him. His stomach drops as it moves silently behind her, creeping far too close to her on spindly legs and his mouth feels dry, his feet cemented in place for only a moment but it’s enough to leave her gaping at him.

He swallows, shaking his head rapidly. “R-Rae.”

“ _What_ , Max?”

“There’s a—”

Before he can finish, the mantiqueen rears its head, unleashing a piercing shriek. It’s all she can do to scramble out of the way just in time and even _then_ its needle-like foreleg only barely misses her, driving into the sandy ground like a stake instead.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

Because as with any mantisaur, where one calls, others follow. It only takes him seconds to lift his shotgun, ready it, but even seconds seem too long right now, because it’s only him and Rae and a fucking _mantiqueen_ , with another two mantisaurs crawling out of the ruined prefab a hundred yards behind her and a mantiswarm buzzing somewhere in the distance.

The beast screeches again, leg after leg stabbing into the dirt at Rae’s feet and she has little time as it is to dodge the hits, let alone unholster her pistol.

“Stay still!” he yells, pumping his shotgun.

“Stay—” she repeats, ducking a swing from the queen’s foreleg just in time. “ _Me_?”

“Yes, you!”

“Max, are you—” She jumps, crouches, rolls out of the way just in time. “— _fucking_ kidding me right now?”

He grumbles, following the movements of the two of them down the sights of his barrel. “I’m afraid not, Captain.” But _if it would_ just _stand a little higher, high enough to get Rae out of range_ …

When the mantiqueen rears again, she drops to the ground, somersaulting out of the way quickly.

He fires.

“Gotcha,” he whispers.

With a sickening cry, the mantiqueen topples, front legs first, then back. He’d gotten her right where he’d wanted to— _right between the fucking eyes_ —and in one hit, she’s done for.

He’s halfway to feeling smug when Rae jumps up to her feet again, pointing behind him.

“Max…”

 _Right_.

Locked and loaded again, he turns to find the swarm fast approaching. Without the queen to get a first crack on the two of them, _it’s fucking open season on us_ , and Rae knows it too.

One blast from his own shotgun is enough to take down half of them, and newly freed from the hand-to-hand ( _or hand-to-pincer?_ ) combat, Rae pulls out her pistol, using the mantiqueen’s corpse as a makeshift cover from the maelstrom of plasma. He sees her yell something to him, but it’s all gunfire and buzzing in his ears and he can’t hear her anyway, doesn’t even bother to call back—it’s all he can do to reload and fire again, swatting the swarm around his head when he can and _Law damn me for leaving the fucking tossball stick at the ship_.

They’re surrounded. _We’re fucking surrounded_. Even when they _do_ manage to rid themselves of the mantiswarm around them, it’s not without a few bites each and a couple plasma burns on Max’s arms, and when he gets his bearings again, fumbling with the last of the ammunition boxes he’d stuffed in his pocket before leaving the Unreliable, he can hear them. Mantisaurs. And not just the two the queen had called to earlier. More. Growling and snapping and whipping their tails about.

“Max…” Rae says, voice shaking, standing from behind the corpse of the mantiqueen.

With his shotgun loaded, he snaps the barrel back into place and steps backwards toward her, slowly.

“How many—”

“I count eight,” he mutters, and he can see her doing the same, silently, eyes wide as she shoves a loaded magazine back into her pistol.

“Eight,” she agrees, her back to him, walking slowly in reverse until they meet, until he can feel her shoulders in the middle of his back and the heels of her own boots against his.

“We’re—”

“—fucked,” she finishes. She cocks her pistol.

He pumps his shotgun.

One of the mantisaurs screeches, and he hears a soft _click_ behind him.

“Rae?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Rae—”

 _Click_.

“It’s stuck,” she breathes, and he realizes.

Because _Law_ , it’s her _fucking_ Spacer’s Choice pistol—the one that always jams. Stuck. In the middle of a circle of mantisaurs that are slowly creeping in on them. “Get down,” he growls.

She pulls a knife from the sheathe on her hip instead. “No.”

“ _Rae_ —”

He feels her step away from him, the _absence_ of her, and he hears the mantisaurs shrieking behind him, in front of him, all around them as those closest to him close in.

He fires.

And it’s just like before—the noise and the chaos—and yet he _wishes_ it were another mantiswarm again, anything but the mess of towering mantisaurs, and he reloads as fast as he can but he doesn’t have much ammunition left, and _Rae_ , he thinks, chancing a glance over his shoulder.

Only to get the wind knocked out of him as soon as he isn’t looking.

He hears her yell his name as soon as he hits the ground, but it’s all he can do to choke out a cough, catch his breath, get his bearings. He blinks, eyes watering, pulling himself up again, flexing his fingers and _fuck_ , his shotgun’s gone—knocked away when the mantisaur hit him. He’s about to look for it when a shadow looms over him, the creature back for more again.

And this time, he’s unarmed.

“No!” Rae jumps in front of him, flipping her knife quickly in her hand, and that’s all it takes to get him scrambling to his feet again.

“Rae—”

She slashes the mantisaur once, ducking when it swings its foreleg at her in retaliation. He gapes at her, but _she’s buying me time_ , he reasons, and he looks around again for his gun. _There_ —a few yards away. The other mantisaurs are still fighting for a chance to reach them but he lunges for it anyway, _there’s nothing to lose, really_ , and anyway _if we’re going to die by mantisaur we might as well die fighting_.

Gun in hand and sand in his boots, he straightens up again, looking nervously at Rae before sending another blast to the nearest mantisaur. He glances back again.

She’s fighting hard, but not without sustaining injuries herself. He can see the scrapes on her arms, the tear in the leg of her pants, the way she’s slower to dodge each swing and snapping bite from the mantisaurs and _she can’t keep this up for much longer_ and neither can he, but he pumps the shotgun and fires again anyway.

The mantisaurs are biting from all sides now, and he loads the last of his ammunition one more time, taking a hit to the back of the head when he does, and he spits out a little blood before looking back up.

He fires.

He’s hit again.

And this time, when he hits the ground, it’s harder to catch his breath again. He grasps the sand under him, but it’s harder to see what’s happening. _Rae_ , he thinks, tries to say it, but her name never leaves his mouth, and in his fading vision, all he can make out is the mantisaur hoovering over him, snapping it’s jaw and sizing him up.

He thinks he hears machine gun fire before everything turns black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i made three chapters before i gave in but unfortunately i will die before i make an OC who isn't a knife wife. also, i commissioned some art of rae--you can see [here](https://bitchesofostwick.tumblr.com/post/627710864092512256/commissioned-mrdraws-for-my-1-badass-babey).


	5. Once More, Like Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which max and rae solve one problem only to create another

It’s cold. And it’s _hard_. And he can hear things—tinkering, some sort of metal on metal, unhurried muttering and impatient questions, all distant and far away and distorted, like he’s underwater and everything important lies up above. He tries to open his eyes, but his lids are heaving, sticky, and somehow he’s able to manage it day after day after day at his vicarage at the crack of down each morning with nothing to look forward to but a half-empty service and the redundant dreary confessions of the same three or four laborers but now, _now_ it’s too much of an effort.

He keeps them closed.

 _...had Felix bring her to her room_ , says a voice—a familiar one, though he can’t pinpoint it—a little clearer, a little closer than before. 

_...have to bring Max somewhere else once the drugs wear off, but for now…_

He furrows his brow, or at least, it’s his instinct to. Little moves. 

_Don’t you think he’s cold?_ asks another, and this he knows. His arms feel heavy, his fingers weak, but he _tries._

 _Parvati_.

It’s cold underneath him, but there are voices.

 _The Unreliable_.

He can’t feel his toes but he _can_ feel his ribs, with each low, even breath. They _hurt_. And so does his shoulder. And this time, when he tries to bend his fingers, there’s pain there too, and on his forearm, and in his chest, and—

 _Rae_.

When he tries to open his eyes this time, he’s successful.

_Rae._

It’s bright. And it’s...dingy.

It’s the fucking kitchen.

 _Why_ — he thinks, and he tries, “why—”

“ _There_ he is!” says Ellie, coming around to where he lies, motionless but for his lips and his eyes and now, gradually, his fingers. She’s far too loud for his tastes—always is, _but this time it’s worse_. “I was wondering when you might come around.”

“Why am I…” he manages, breathing deeply now and still looking up at the near-blinding light fixture above him.

“Easy, Vicky.”

He grunts. “Why—”

“Drugs are still wearing off a bit.”

“Why—”

“You’ll need a moment to get your extremities going,” she remarks, “and even longer to—”

“Dr. Fenhill,” he says through gritted teeth, mustering all of his strength—and every bit of air in his lungs. “Why am I on the _fucking_ kitchen table?”

She scoffs at him. “A simple ‘thank you, Ellie’ would be enough, Max. Or else next time Nyoka and I’ll be happy to leave you out in the dirt for the mants.”

 _The mantisaurs_.

His eyes widen. 

“Don’t even think about sitting up too fast,” Ellie mutters. “Rae did after I stitched her up and—”

“Rae—” He scrambles up, pain immediately shooting from his ribs to his shoulders and he winces, gritting his teeth. 

Ellie snorts. “You two never fucking _listen_. Bet that didn’t feel so good.”

“It’s fine, Dr. Fenhill,” he grumbles, looking away so she can’t see the way his eyes water from the pain. It takes a moment before the stars seem to fade from his vision, and he clears his throat. “You said—Rae—”

“She’ll be all right. I stitched her up first. She’s resting now.”

It only occurs to him a moment later to scoff. “Thank you for thinking to let my wounds take a backseat,” he mutters with a sarcasm that takes just a moment longer than normal.

She shrugs. “Figured it’d be what you wanted, anyway.”

She’s right. She’s right, even if he won’t say it.

He coughs weakly.

“Anyway. She’s fine. No thanks to you.”

He sputters. “I _tried_ —”

“Save it, Vicky,” she interrupts him with an icy smile. “Neither of you are in a good position to defend the stupidity that was walking right into a fucking mantiqueen’s nest. You’re only lucky Nyoka and I thought of looking for you, after you didn’t come back.”

“You were the one who let her wander off this fucking ship with nothing but a shitty pistol in the first place!” he argues. “To ‘walk it off,’ or whatever the fuck you said. You were perfectly okay with—”

“I didn’t think you two would stand out there all afternoon resolving every single microaggression you’ve had since landing on Monarch! But you did!” She scoffs. “And what did it cost us? At least another week of lost time. Because you aren’t leaving this ship until that bite heals, and Rae’s got even longer considering the shape she’s in.”

Whatever grimace he’d worn before fades away at the very idea. “How bad is she?” he asks softly.

Ellie shrugs. “Couple cracked rubs, a bunch of scrapes. Plasma burns. Nothing I couldn’t fix—” she adds smugly, “but she’ll need some time and rest, too.”

A week. An entire week before Rae can continue her work—he has no doubt that lunatic scientist Welles will be a wreck when he gets the news—and a week before Parvati can visit the Groundbreaker, and a week before Felix can get to Scylla for whatever it is he...

His mind trails off at the very thought of Scylla, of gathering his belongings from his cabin and getting another transport off of Monarch. The idea seems impossible now. He tries again to flex his fingers (they do, with considerable stiffness) and wiggle his toes (they don’t, at all). _Just the drugs_ , he thinks.

“The bite you mentioned,” he says gruffly, and Ellie’s quick to glare at him until he lies down again.

“In your side. If you’re going to ask how bad it is, the answer is ‘bad enough that if you try to do more than I say you can too early, you’d better be prepared for all of your vital organs to fall right out of your abdomen and onto the floor.’ And I won’t stuff them in and sew you up a second time. Got it?”

“Noted,” he mutters. 

When Ellie turns around to the sink, he looks about him (as much as he can without twisting or sitting up) to see the workspace she’s set up in the kitchen, the well-worn seats and stools pushed to the wall to make room for a small rolling server, dusty bottles of Spectrum vodka and Rum and Somethin’ removed and replaced with various medical instruments, none of which he knows the actual terms for but all of which can be vaguely described as _knives_. There’s a spread of needles—some injectable and some threadable—and disinfectant, half-squeezed bottles of Auntie Cleo’s ointments and grubby-looking tubs of Spacer’s Choice lotion.

He shudders. He’s never been much for needles and stitches.

“How long am I confined to the kitchen table?” he asks finally.

“Until you can stand up comfortably and walk down the hall.”

“But Rae—”

“Felix and Parvati brought Rae to her room so that I had the space to operate on you,” Ellie interrupts him. “You can ask Felix to carry you, but…” She smirks. “Well.”

He considers it. For a moment, he really considers asking for help to go and see her.

He grumbles. “Very well.”

***

In the end, it’s another hour before he has the full movement and use of his limbs back and another hour on top of that before he can stand and walk without getting dizzy (and without the snorts and remarks of _I told you so, Vicky_ ). 

But when he can stand, and when he can walk, it’s not to his own room that his feet carry him. It’s to Rae’s, and he walks there with determination, ignoring Ellie’s jabbing remarks to _get back here, Maxy_ and _I’m not going to bring all these painkillers to your room_ for _you_. He doesn’t turn back. The stairs at the end of the hall present a small challenge—nothing he can’t tackle without gripping the handrail until his knuckles are white.

He knocks on her door, once, twice, _politely_ , not at all the sort of knocking one does in the kind of relationship they have. _Had_ , he reminds himself; all of that ended somewhere between him splitting knuckles on Chaney’s jawbone and them getting their asses handed to them by a horde of mants.

“It’s open,” she replies, quiet enough that he’s not sure he’s heard her correctly at all, and his hand hovers over the door. “Max,” she says, louder this time, and he feels his face grow warmer.

The room is dim when he steps inside, lit only by the glowing Spacer’s Choice sign she’d convinced Parvati to help her steal from Edgewater out of sheer spite, and also the hazy orange light from Monarch below them. But it’s enough to see her—the back of her—when he climbs the stairs gingerly, favoring his foot and the still-throbbing pain in his shoulder.

She doesn’t turn over to look at him, but he can see enough—thick bandages wrapped around her ribcage, visible under the hem of her loose cropped tank top. Red welts on her arm, bruising here and there, and he feels a pang of regret in his chest.

“How did you know it was me?” he asks quietly, and she shrugs.

“Only you would knock like that.”

His throat feels tight, his stomach hollow. “How, uh. How are you?”

“Fine.”

“‘Fine,’” he repeats, incredulous, closing his eyes impatiently. “Rae—”

“What about you? Did they get you bad?”

He scowls. “By your standards, no.”

Only _now_ does she turn over, and he can hear her suck in a breath when she does, see the way she clenches her jaw in pain. She looks him over, up and down, and it’s still dark but _she doesn’t need a light to see everything_.

“You look like shit.”

“I imagine I do.”

She points across the room, at the worn and discolored desk chair in front of her computer terminal. “Sit, if it helps.”

He knows what she means. He opts for the floor instead, wincing and holding onto the frame of her bed when he lowers himself down beside her. Face to face, where he can look at her, see her, be close to her. 

If he’s overstepped, he’s not sure he can find it in himself to mind.

“I’m s—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” she interrupts him. “I went out alone in the first place.”

“And Ms. Fenhill and Ms. Ramnarim-Wentworth trusted me to retrieve you and bring you back in one piece.”

“You’re not responsible for me or my safety,” she counters. “And anyway, I am...technically...in one piece.”

He frowns. “Right.”

She sits up just a little, propping herself on her elbows. “Please don’t tell me you only came here to apologize.”

“Well, no, I, um…” he says quickly. “I just meant...Ms. Fenhill said we’re ordered to rest for at least a week. Which means, um.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“I’ll have to, ah. Remain here, for at least that much longer.”

Her eyes darken before she looks away from him. “You don’t have to go.”

“I don’t want to im—”

“We discussed this already,” she says abruptly. “You’re not imposing. And I meant it, Max. Stay until we get to Scylla, if you want to.”

 _I_ do _want to_ , he thinks, even if he can’t bring himself to say it out loud. He swallows the lump in his throat. “And then what?”

“And then…” Her silver-gray eyes sparkle with something somber in the dim neon light. “And then that’s it, right? We part ways. Like we’d planned.” 

He takes a deep breath. And he nods. _All according to plan. All according to_ the _Plan._

“Is that it?”

He shrugs, and they sit, for a moment, quietly. There’s a quiet, ongoing electric buzz from the neon lights of the Spacer’s Choice sign, and then the deafening silence of space around them. He wishes he could find it peaceful.

“I was, um.” He clears his throat. “Very worried about you, out there.”

Her eyes bore into him even while her lips, her expression, remain still. “You were the one who went down first, Max. Not me.”

“Captain,” he sighs, and he notices her eyes narrow. His heart wrenches. “Rae.”

“I’m only saying—”

“I was worried about you. You scared—”

“ _I_ scared you?” she cries, grimacing when she sits up. She swallows. “Max, you were the one blacking out under a fucking mant, no ammo, no nothing—if I didn’t—I almost thought you—” She shakes her head, squeezes her eyes shut. “Don’t ever fucking do that again.”

 _Do what?_ he wants to ask. _Follow you? Apologize? Try to get us out of that mess?_ But he’s too tired, and _anyway, she speaks in earnest_.

“I’ll make a note of it.”

She scowls.

“So,” he continues, clearing his throat. “Are we…”

She narrows her eyes at him. “It’s like you said before. You’re a vicar, Max. And I’m just your captain.”

 _Just_ , he thinks, her tone sending goosebumps over his skin.

“That much is true.”

“And you’re leaving. After Scylla.”

“I was always going to leave,” he points out, like it’s a _justification_ and not a nail in his own coffin. He has to keep himself from harking back to her words: _it never stopped you before_.

“You were. And it was my mistake for forgetting that.”

“Well, I still think that we…”

“Max,” she says, an edge of warning in her tone, but he stares her down. Hard.

“I meant it when I said I look forward to your company.”

“ _Max_.”

“And if you don’t agree—that is, if you don’t find the same enjoyment in my company, I can certainly leave. If not your ship then at least your—your quarters. I can—”

“Don’t go.”

“Oh.”

She exhales slowly. “I do like your company, Max,” she says, her voice shaking. And then even quieter: “Sometimes too much.”

His breath catches in his throat, and he turns to face her. Close.

_Oh._

_I’ll leave after this_ , he wants to say. But instead—

“Can I—”

“If you want,” she whispers. 

“And then?”

Her eyes dart from his own to his lips before burning into his gaze again. “And then we carry on,” she breathes, licking her lips. “Like before.”

“And then?”

She shivers when he brushes the hair out of her face. “And then when we’re all healed up, we get back to work.” She reaches her scarred hand out to him, to his chest, fingers barely grazing the ribbed cotton of his undershirt when she does.

He swallows. “And then?”

“And then we get to Scylla.”

“And then?”

“And then you leave.”

His eyes still locked with hers, he nods. “Very well, Captain,” he whispers, and he pretends not to notice the way her gaze flickers down. He’s careful when he leans over to her—ribs still sore, shoulder aching. _And she’s worse off than you_. And he cups her cheek carefully, tender around the cuts and burns on her neck. 

And he kisses her, and somehow he says more in the wordless movement of his lips on hers than he has since he first set foot in her bedroom. It’s hot and it’s hungry and _by the Law_ , he hasn’t had any part of her since before they’d set foot in Fallbrook—since they’d meddled around in dusty prefabs, since they’d spent their time fucking instead of talking in all the days since he’d kissed her that night on her birthday.

He knows she can feel it too—the absence, or at least, the absence there’d been before. _I’m here again_ , he wants to say, _I’m not leaving_ , but it would be a lie.

_I’m not leaving yet._

Her fingers pull at his undershirt again, cold to the touch even through the fabric, but needy. Impatient, just like her mouth, hot and searching for something his body wants to give but something deeper cautions against.

 _Not like this_ , he thinks.

“Max.”

 _You’re still hurt_.

She pulls his shirt again, pulls him closer, and again: “Max.”

Reluctantly, he slings his knee up on her mattress, and eagerly, she shifts over for him.

“Careful.”

“It’s okay,” she replies, like she hadn’t winced making room for him on her bed.

She slides her hands down his chest, slips her cold fingers down to untuck his shirt from his pants, and he grimaces. 

“Wait.”

Abruptly, she stops. “Did I hurt you?” she breathes, sitting back again and pushing her hair out of her face, breathless and rosy-cheeked and even with her flush, he can still see the exhaustion around her eyes.

“No.” A half-lie.

“Are you—”

“Yes.”

Her shoulders rise and fall with her breathing. “Then—”

“Rae,” he interrupts her, and he leans in again. And this time when he kisses her, it’s soft. Careful. And he can _hear_ the way her breath catches in her throat, the way he catches her off guard, _feel_ the way her shoulders stiffen and her jaw clenches and her fingers stop pulling at his shirt.

And then she sighs. And she stops pulling, and she stops _pushing_ , and she stops leading him. She lets him kiss her, gentle and slow, and _Rae_ , he thinks. 

He touches her cheek. _You could’ve been hurt bad_. And he breathes deeply. _Be more careful_ , he thinks, but also, _it could’ve been my fault_. He can feel her weight as she leans into him more, slow, gradual. Her fingers were cold but _her lips are warm_ , and he breathes her in as he kisses her, soft, gentle, one at a time first and then one longer, and _careful_ again, and—

“Don’t kiss me like that,” she says suddenly, pulling away from him, pulling him out of his thoughts and off of her lips. 

He blinks at her, out of breath and bewildered and a little dazed. “Like what?”

“Like you—” she stutters, crossing her arms over her chest, holding onto herself. “Like you...because I know you don’t actually…”

“Rae—”

“I’m sorry,” she says quickly, shaking her head. “I-I just realized I’m not...I’m feeling lightheaded.”

“I’ll get you some water.”

“No!” She pulls her knees into her chest, grimacing. “No, it’s—don’t worry about it. I’ll be okay. I’m sorry. We can...let’s talk later. Okay?”

He furrows his brow. “Rae.”

“I’m just tired now. From—”

“Of course,” he says softly, trying to quell the frustration growing in his chest—not at her, but at himself. _Kiss you like what?_ he wants to know. “You should rest. Forgive me for…”

“I’m sorry,” she breathes again, and _for what?_

He stands up gingerly, favoring his shoulder as he pulls himself carefully off her bed. “I’ll leave you to get some sleep.”

She nods.

It’s dark still when he makes for the door, leaving the orange hazy light from the planet below behind him as he reaches for the door button.

“You too.”

He pauses. “Rae?”

“You should get some sleep too,” she mumbles. “Max.”

He licks his lips, swallows. “Right, Captain. Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long delay!! lots has happened since the last update, but i'm trying to keep my mental health in order and will try to get back to some semblance of regular posting lol.


	6. La Langue Française

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's a lot of fucking in this chapter and none of it is satisfying

She doesn’t speak of it again. Just like her birthday. It’s like nothing ever _fucking_ happened, and he curses himself for it daily, along with the ever-so-present _what did you expect?_ lingering in his thoughts. The constant reminder that _this is what you signed up for_ , and _this is what you agreed to_ , and _this is what she wants_.

 _This_ being the resumed casual, emotionless, no-strings-attached nature of their...relationship. They fuck. Again. Like before, and nothing more than that, at least immediately following their agreement. They’re confined to the ship anyway, and though Ellie warns against any _rigorous physical activity_ while they heal from their injuries, she doesn’t explicitly say _no fucking_ , and though Nyoka explicitly says _no fucking_ , she’s not a doctor (as Rae so intelligently points out), so they ignore her in favor of their regular meetings, more often than not in his room again, and under the guise of _reading together_.

It’s an excuse everyone on the Unreliable knows by now. _No rigorous reading!_ Ellie calls after them on more than one occasion. It flusters Max usually, but Rae acts like she doesn’t hear her, or she doesn’t care. No sooner are they in his room, door closed, are her hands on his chest, nails digging into his shirt in tandem with her standing on her tiptoes to reach him for a kiss.

They don’t talk.

Not at first.

At first, she doesn’t linger and she doesn’t speak—not of the night he’d hobbled into her room, aching and sore and sorry, not of anything at all. And when they’re finished rutting like damned _teenagers_ on the floor of his cabin, because _of course the bed was just too far away_ , she leaves. Walks away without a word.

They converse otherwise, much in the way she converses with anyone else in the crew. She asks him to pass the pre-sliced bred at the dinner table. After listening to Felix and Parvati talk her ear off about the latest episode of their favorite aetherwave serial, she asks him about the tossball score. She doesn’t specify a match or any team and he’s quite certain she has no idea of the league standings as it _is_ , but she still asks, and he manages to quip back the numbers from the Auntie Cleo’s Darlings and Spacer’s Chosen match he’d caught the day before on the radio. She smiles and nods with a robotic politeness before disappearing down the hall to talk with ADA.

But they don’t talk while they _fuck_ , and the fact that he’s so bothered about it only bothers him even more.

It’s not until the third day of their forced recuperation period that she slips up. She’s straddled over him—a position Max has come to favor quite a lot, though he’ll never say something about it—when he thinks she whispers his name. Just _Max_.

“Rae,” he replies instantly, _instinctively_ , but no sooner has it started is the moment lost. Her fingers had been in his hair and suddenly they aren’t, her lips brushing his ear and suddenly they’re gone. And the soft skin he’d dug his fingers into tenses up, and she stops. “Is everything all right?” he asks her tentatively.

She waits, catching her breath. “Yes, I...sorry. It’s nothing.”

“ _Rae_ ,” he tries to say, but her lips silence him before he can say much more. And he lets her. Whatever spark in him had tried to meet her attentions, dig _deeper_ , ask _more_ —it’s not enough to try a second time. He lets her distracting lips do as they will. It’s been enough, _it should be enough now_. And when it’s done, over, she slips away quietly, out of his room and out from his grasp.

But she lingers the next day, and that’s something.

They don’t talk much, but she lies next to him when it’s done. Just breathing. And he knows she can see his eyes lingering on her, though she neither says anything of it nor turns away, nor crosses her arms over herself in propriety or to tease. Just lies still, only her breasts rising and falling with every breath, goosebumps growing over her skin the longer they lie.

 _Stay_ , he considers telling her, but _she already is staying_ and surely if he utters the very word it’ll be enough to prompt the opposite. So he turns onto his back, stretching his arms up over his head and his legs until the soles of his feet meet the constrained walls of the bunk.

“Want a smoke?” she says finally, and he tilts his head to stare at her, bewildered.

“I—no, thank you. I don’t smoke anymore.”

“Parvati said you were smoking after I’d left the ship that day. In Fallbrook.”

He tries and pretends a heated flush doesn’t rise to his cheeks. She doesn’t look up, but it bothers him to feel it nonetheless. “I don’t...well, sometimes. Certain occasions call for…” His voice trails off before he shakes the thought from his mind. “I didn’t know _you_ smoked, Captain.”

She shrugs, swinging her arm down over the side of the bunk, to the storage drawers beneath. “I don’t.”

He raises his eyebrows while she rummages around. _Ribs are still sore_ , he observes, rolling his shoulders again. He glances at her back, unclothed still and baring the mantisaur’s plasma burns in full view, and he still winces when he sees them but _they’re not nearly as raw as before_ , days ago upon their return to the Unreliable and after Ellie’s treatment. He only wishes the sight of her healing would absolve the weight of the guilt he still feels when he remembers that _she shouldn’t have been out there at all_ and _it’s still your fault, even if it’s in the past now_.

“You’ve still got a lot of candy down here, Max,” she says quietly, still perusing the contents of his drawer. “Candy I didn’t put here. I thought you didn’t have much of a sweet tooth.”

“Well, I—”

“Dark Matter!” she interrupts him. It’s the first note of excitement his heard in her voice in days. “These are my favorite.”

“Yes, I—” he stammers. “They’re for you.”

She pauses, still hung over the side of his bed. “Did you...know that—”

“You said so once.”

Her shoulders relax, and the tense feeling in his heart eases. “Oh,” she says. And she pushes the drawer closed with a melancholy metal scratching, and she lies down with him again, side by side though she won’t look at him, and she peels the paper first and then the foil from the chocolate bar before bringing it to her teeth to take a bite.

* * *

On the fifth day that he finds himself in bed with her, she suggests visiting Felix’s old friend on Scylla _before_ they visit his translator. It’s a suggestion he agrees to immediately, without a second thought, though she qualifies her proposition by saying _I have no idea how long it may take_ and _may be a few days, maybe even more_ and _you don’t have to say yes_ and _I don’t want to delay you any more than you already have been_ but with only the tip of his index finger, he quiets her, pushing it gently to the plush velvet of her lips and even as she turns away from him quickly, he sees the soft smile on her face before she does, the blush that crawls to her ears even as her head looks the other way.

It makes him smile too until he remembers just what he’s putting off by detouring on Scylla. _You’re leaving eventually_ , he reminds himself, although the very thought of leaving gives him a sour taste in his mouth and a hollow question in the back of his mind: _what are you_ doing _?_ and _what is the point of it all?_ Questions that don’t align with the Plan. With the Universal Equation. Questions he shouldn’t be asking at all.

“Yes,” he says quietly, “that’ll be...that’s a good idea.” He stops himself from adding _Captain_ at the end, the title he wishes he could forget, however easy it slips off his tongue outside the ship or in bed.

She’s satisfied with his answer. If she’s as concerned as he is that _we’re only prolonging the inevitable_ , she certainly doesn’t show it, and the way the rosy blush still lingers on her cheeks, the way she hums contentedly to herself when she stretchers her legs and her toes, he’s not about to point it out to her.

* * *

On the last day they’re confined to the ship, he catches the ends of an argument between Rae and Ellie as he reads—or more accurately, looks over the crinkled pages of an OSI-issued volume on Scientism for the hundredth time as though he hasn’t already committed its contents to memory—in his room. He’d say he’s not one to eavesdrop—that the way conversation carries from the kitchen to his cabin is all but impossible to ignore—but he’d be lying. He likes to know what’s going on; it’s part of the reason he’d kept his door open so many nights anyway, _at least until Rae happened to me_.

The argument is as he expects. They should be finished with their stint aboard the Unreliable to heal. _I feel fine_ and _Max does too_ Rae complains and _I want to go to the Groundbreaker before we go to Scylla_ and she talks and she talks and she _talks_ until finally Ellie snaps.

“Does the term ‘doctor’s orders’ mean nothing to you?”

Max puts his book down thoughtfully.

“Well—”

“It’s not ‘doctor’s suggestions,’ Rae! It’s ‘doctor’s _orders_ ’! So when I say you have to rest for a week, I mean a week. Not six days, a week.”

For a moment, it’s silent, though Max can only imagine the flushed, flustered indignation manifesting on Rae’s face at being told _no_.

“Anyway, what’s so important about stopping at the Groundbreaker?” Ellie continues. “Is it for Parvati? Because _she’s_ not the one whose body’s literally fusing back together after that shit show of a—”

“It’s not Parvati,” Rae interrupts her. She mumbles something else too—something too quiet for Max to hear from his room, regardless of how he cranes his neck and tilts his head toward the door, _as if it makes much of a difference_.

Ellie snorts. “We could go tomorrow.”

“I promised Felix we’d skip out to Scylla tomorrow.”

“Well, the Lost Hope’ll still be standing after we go to Scylla. Or there’s plenty of booze here if you really wanna drink. Under my watchful eye, of course. My theoretical watchful eye.”

Rae sighs. “Never mind, Ellie.”

“You don’t have to ‘never mind’ me. I know what this is about.” There’s another pause. “A last hurrah, huh? I thought you were fine just _splitting up_.

“ _Ellie_ —”

“What? I’m just saying. It sounds like Maxy really fucked his way to forgiveness.”

With _that_ he stands, balling his hands in fists at his sides. The book he’d been reading is long forgotten now in exchange for a familiar heat building in his fingers and his heart, but he’s not sure what he’s more angry over: Ellie’s words, or that he knows _what she says is right_.

“Oh, come on,” Ellie continues. “Don’t look at me like that. Rae, it’s a—it’s a _joke_ —”

“Why should it matter if I forgave him? He’s not sticking around, anyway.”

Ellie snorts. “And you’re totally okay with that.”

“I _am_ ,” Rae snaps. “And if I want to enjoy my...stupid, meaningless hookups, then just...let me. Okay?”

Ellie mutters something incomprehensible. _Snarky_. And no sooner has she said it does he hear footsteps walking—or more accurately, rushing—down the hall.

He doesn’t realize his fists are still balled until she bursts into his cabin in a whirlwind of _huffs_ and rosy cheekbones and clenched teeth and she closes the door behind her as soon as she’s over the threshold and _Max_ he thinks she says, and he all but catches her, the muscles in his fingers and arms relaxing as she falls in.

“Rae, what are you—”

“I don’t want to talk,” she grumbles, and his mind might be slow when she catches him off guard but _Law_ , his body isn’t, and suddenly the exchange in the kitchen he’d overheard is long behind him, the tension melting away but the heat, the warmth within him remaining.

She’s not gentle when he leans down to kiss her.

 _No_ , when she reaches for him, she _pulls_. Yanks his shirt from where it’s tucked into his pants, pulling it up, up, as far as she can reach when she only comes to about his shoulders but he helps her the rest of the way, manages to tear his hands from her waist for just a moment to pull the shirt over his head. And then she’s working on his belt. His pants. He has to help her by kicking his boots off himself—clumsily, too, though he’s stepping backwards as it is and manages to grab the side of his bed with one hand to catch his balance.

“ _Rae_ ,” he groans, falling back on his mattress as she climbs over him.

“I just want—”

“And you can have it,” he interrupts her, not wanting her to get the wrong idea, because _Law, whatever she wants I’ll have for myself too_. “But we seem— _ah_ —a bit imbalanced.”

She raises her eyebrows, but she’s got him going already, and his hands move faster than her brain can understand his meaning. It’s not until he’s pulling at the waistband of her sweatpants—the only thing he’s seen her in all week while they’ve recovered, when he’s seen her in anything at all—that she sees.

And for the first time since she’d rushed into his room, she smiles.

She pulls off her top while he tugs off her sweatpants—too impatiently, as it turns out, because she ends up toppling over onto him while they’re still bunched around her ankles but _apparently it’s enough_ , he thinks, because she giggles, and she pulls herself up by his shoulders to kiss him again while she untangles the sweatpants with her feet.

She hasn’t laughed with him in... _I can’t remember how long_. He’s missed it. He wants to bottle it up, to _remember_ it. He’s not sure when he’ll hear it again, _if I’ll hear it again_ —

But her nails dig into his shoulders now, _impatient when she’s had enough_ , and he turns his focus back on the way she looks sitting atop him. The way the tresses of her pink hair fall into her face, the way the ends tickle his when she leans over him, kisses his lips before biting at the corner of his mouth.

“Rae—”

“I know,” she breathes.

She fumbles with his underwear and he pulls off hers, and it’s rare that they’re very coordinated and calculated anyway but this is hurried and needy as ever, _she came to you for a reason_ he reminds himself as he flips her over, runs his hand over her thigh before teasing two fingers over the wetness of her cunt.

 _Stupid, meaningless hookups_ , she’d said.

“Max—”

“I know.”

* * *

She lingers again after they’ve fucked. It’s something he could become used to, _if there were more time_ he reasons or _if it meant much_. But he’ll take what he can get. It’s her lying between him and the dusty tinted window this time, a change from their usual position but he can still see the stars from where he lies, and he watches them, waiting for her to say something, waiting perhaps for her to ask him to move so that she can leave.

She doesn’t.

“Grab me a chocolate bar?” she asks finally, nodding to him. She pulls the sheets up to her waist as he obliges, leaning over the side of his bed to retrieve a bar from his drawer for her, and after he settles back down, she shifts beside him.

Closer.

He tenses at first. But _it’s nice_ , the way her forehead rests against his shoulder as she chews thoughtfully, the way her fingers still brush over his forearm in the silence.

“I _am_ sorry,” he says finally. She’d said _I don’t want to talk_ before but she’s lying with him, touching him, with no sign of leaving him yet and _that was then, this is now_. “For what happened. In Fallbrook.”

“We already talked about this,” she mumbles.

“I know.”

“I thought we agreed to leave it in the past.”

“I _know_.”

“Then why are you—”

“I’m still sorry,” he cuts her off, and she sighs, taking another bite of chocolate. “Maybe not incredibly sorry for beating up Chaney—”

She snorts, pushing the wrapper further down. “That would be truly out of character.”

“—but for lying to you, and misleading you,” he finishes. “For that, I’m still sorry.” _For that, I will always be sorry._

He remembers again, that this is just a _stupid, meaningless hookup_ , but what can he do? He stretches his hands over his head before resting them again on his belly, closing his eyes. Moments later, he feels her lie her head on his chest.

 _Meaningless_ , he thinks, though his heart aches at her touch. She moves a little—he can hear her folding the wrapper back over her chocolate, putting it aside.

“I lied too,” she murmurs, her finger tracing shapes and patterns on his shoulder, his collarbone.

He hums curiously, eyes still closed.

“I can speak French.”

 _Now_ he opens his eyes. “What?” he demands, nearly rolling her off of him when he sits up to get a better look at her face, her _eyes_. Her eyes always tell the truth. And right now, they glimmer, silver-gray with humor but _no lies_ , he realizes. He knits his brow, waiting.

“Not a lot,” she says slowly, propped up on her elbow now with that devilish grin of hers—the kind of fun he’d missed in her, the playfulness he’d known before everything had happened between them.

That _teasing._

“Just conversational French,” she clarifies. “I took a class once, when I was in school. I don’t remember much, so don’t even ask if it would help with your book.”

“I would’ve hoped you’d have told me by now, if it would,” he grumbles. His frown all but disappears when she pinches him once on the shoulder, and he settles back down, waits for a cue again.

She lies back down with him.

“So what can you say?”

“What?”

“What _do_ you remember how to say?” he asks.

She smiles—that shy smile she does sometimes—hiding her nose between his shoulder and his pillow. “Basic shit,” she replies. “Like, _bonjour, Max, comment-allez vous?_ ” She waits for him to guess, or maybe to ask, but he just stares, eyebrows raised. “It means ‘hello, Max, how are you?’” she laughs, and he smiles.

“What else?”

She bites her lip.

He hates how the action alone has him feeling warm all over again.

“Hm. _Je…_ ’” She pauses thoughtfully. “ _J’aime tes...cheveux._ I think. ‘I like your hair.’”

He snorts. “Thank you.”

“ _Merci_.”

“What?”

“ _Merci_. It means ‘thank you.’”

“Oh.”

She smiles. “ _J’ai faim_. That’s ‘I’m hungry.’ _Je te veux_. ‘I want you.’”

“You’re insatiable,” he mutters, and she does it again—that little smile, breaking eye contact quickly to look down, away.

She lies down again, comfortably on his pillow beside him, turning over again. _To look at the stars_ , he assumes, if only because it’s what he likes to do after they have sex, but after a few minutes of silence, he begins to wonder if she’s fallen asleep.

Beside her, listening to the way she inhales softly and exhales slowly, he could drift off himself, if he’s being honest.

“ _Je t’aime_ ,” she says quietly, and he opens his eyes again.

“What does that mean?”

She shrugs. “I don’t remember.”


	7. Empty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, i do skip over max's revelation a bit, but mostly because he'll go more in detail about it in the next chapter

“I don’t like this,” Rae says for probably the tenth time since leaving Harlow’s base. She’s been pacing in the kitchen from the moment they got back to the Unreliable. Stress cooking, _if you can call it that_ , Max thinks with a mixture of wariness and intrigue as he watches her mix bred noodles with saltuna and a questionable brown sauce with relentless vigor, the bowl clutched to her chest as she walks around the room aimlessly.

Truthfully, he’d known Rae was suspicious of Harlow the moment the man spoke to Felix. He could see it in the way her shoulders stiffened, the way she stood taller, on edge. She only managed to hold her tongue about it until they got back to the ship and Felix was out of earshot in his cabin.

“I know you don’t,” Max says, just as he’d responded every _other_ time she’d said it. He reclines in the worn chair at the table, stretches his arms, weaves his fingers together behind his head. “But the kid’s going to do what he wants. Better let him learn his lesson on his own than get yourself into trouble when nothing’s even happened yet.”

She gapes at him incredulously. “Get myself into trouble? Look who’s talking.”

“Well—”

“I’m being careful,” she argues. “I _am_ careful. Not all of us have the fists to get us into trouble.”

Max snorts. “You don’t need fists. You manage to talk us into every bit of trouble we’ve ever been in.”

“I—”

“Sublight?” he recalls. “Dr. Crane? Reed _Tobson_? And this is all just off the top of my head.”

She frowns. “At least I always talk us out though.”

“Ha.” He swirls the watery remains of his Algae Lager around in his glass. “That you do, Captain.”

“And I will talk Felix out of this ridiculous idea if I have to,” she continues, finally, dropping the bown back on the table. “It’s some sort of trap. I _know_ it.”

Max drains the rest of his glass in one sip. “But talking him out of it right now is a little on the nose, isn’t it?”

“So what if it is?” She scoops the noodle mixture onto two plates before sliding one across to him.

He shrugs. “I just think this could end up being some sort of. Ugh. Learning opportunity, or something.”

She narrows her eyes at him, twirling her noodles around on her fork. “So you’re looking out for him.”

“Well, no, I—”

“You’re looking out for Felix in a kind of weird, twisted way that could potentially land him in a life-threatening position, but you—”

“Life-threatening situations build character.”

“—but you _are_ looking out for him!” she finishes.

He grumbles, finally taking a reluctant bite of the noodles if for no other reason than to not have to answer her question. It’s surprisingly...good. _Salty, but good_.

“Look,” he says, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “If you tell him no, then he’s only going to wonder forever about what could’ve happened. Or worse, resent you. If you tell him yes, and it ends up being a trap—”

“It’s _definitely_ a—”

“Your intuition is usually correct, I’ll give you that much,” Max agrees. “So say it _is_ a trap. Well, there. He learns his lesson.”

She scoffs. “Fine. He wants to go to the Emerald Vale to find out, we go. But you’d better be there to…” She trails off, quieting.

 _Of course._ After all, they’re still in orbit above Scylla. And the next stop is his.

“I—”

“I just meant—”

“I know,” he finishes for her. “No worries at all, Captain.”

Her forced smile twitches at the title.

“When you return to the Emerald Vale, I believe you will help Felix do what’s best. The Plan exists for a reason, after all.”

She nods, slowly, placing her fork down on the table quietly beside her still-half-full plate. “Of course, Max.”

* * *

Parvati offers to join them, once they dock at the main bay on Scylla and make their plans to go. So does Felix. Ellie and Nyoka don’t even bother to leave their cabins to see them off, _because it’s a sore spot for the two of us and they know it_ , Max thinks bitterly, but the younger two of the crew insist: _If there’s gonna be trouble then you oughta let me at it, boss_ and _Captain, I’d be lying if I said this plan didn’t give me the, uh, heebie-jeebies._

But Rae says no to both of them. And when Felix argues again, _because of_ course _he does_ , she gives him the coldest _no_ she can, which is, inevitably, silence. So they left the Unreliable together. Just the two of them.

 _A last hurrah_ , Ellie had teased a couple of days before on the ship when Rae had suggested stopping on the Groundbreaker for Law-knows-what. And now _this_ is it. Their final _hurrah_ , a grand escapade on the absolute ass crack of the long-forgotten asteroid that was Scylla. Looking for a fucking _hermit_ who may or may not even exist.

Perhaps the lack of sentimentality of their mission will be for the best, he muses. _Easier to let go_.

They travel quietly from the ship. _It’s a straight shot from the landing pad to the abandoned village_ , she’d explained to him in the control room after consulting with ADA first. And she’s right. They run into little but marauders after leaving the Unreliable. _It’s a wild country out there_ , Nyoka had warned, not that she’d ever visited Scylla before but _that’s a well-known fact ‘round the mercenaries._ And indeed, they _see_ the primals—purple and white and vile, somehow even more towering than the ones in the Emerald Vale are—but it’s _Rae_ , and she travels quietly when she has to.

 _So quietly we’re not even speaking_.

Only once along the way do their travels attract any unwanted attention, because _Rae is quiet_ but sometimes, _sometimes_ , marauders are even quieter, and they nearly run into a sentry as it turns a corner around one of the massive terraformers along the canyon.

He pulls her so quickly, flush against him and covering her mouth with one gloved hand, that she nearly yelps. He _feels_ the cry from her mouth against his palm but his movements are swift enough that they’re able to remain unseen as the sentry passes by, oblivious to the pair as they hold their breath, waiting.

He could let go sooner. He doesn’t. Nor does she release the tight grip of her fingers around his forearm. “Sorry,” he breathes finally, still holding her.

“Don’t be.” It’s the first time she’s spoken him him since they’d left the ship. “I didn’t see him coming. You did.”

Slowly, almost reluctantly, he relaxes his hold on her. And they continue.

Where the Hephaestus Mining Company once thrived now lie ruins of ugly metal boxes people once called _homes_ , abandoned and neglected but for one still inhabited, lit only by the flickering neon strips of the road before it.

“Is this it?” Rae asks quietly, and somehow he knows she means more than _is this the house?_

He takes a deep breath. “I think so.”

* * *

He doesn’t quite remember what transpires between their arrival and when the hermit lit the incense but when he wakes up, warm and sweating and a little dizzy on the ratty carpet flooring, he knows what happened was good. What happened went _well_. And he feels a little lighter than he had when they’d arrived, and he feels a little happier than he had on their journey out from the Unreliable.

And when he turns to find Rae, he knows the same cannot be said from her.

It makes her sick. _Watch out Max, I’m a lightweight,_ she’d joked with a shaking voice before they’d taken the stuff, but _Law, she wasn’t kidding._ She looks bad enough that he pulls her to her feet quickly, more out of concern than out of logic, and ushers her quickly out of the room. Her face is pale and her hands are cold, clammy when she attempts the doorknob so many times he stops her and intervenes. He’s half afraid they’re moving along too quickly, half afraid to suggest they linger behind for a while, but the look on her face says only _out_ , and _who am I to say no to her?_

“I need…” she mumbles, fumbling with his hand until he grips her fingers tightly in his own to steady her. “I need air. Fresh air.”

He frowns, gazing up at the aether above and around the planet’s enclosure. “I’m afraid un-fresh air will have to do, Captain.”

“Rae.” Even in this state, she corrects him.

_Rae. Yes, I know._

With the taste of her name still unspoken on his tongue, he leads her outside into the cold, dark night. At least it feels like night. Terra 2 is well and good for a respectable day and night cycle. _This Law-forsaken place, though…_

“Max?”

“Cap—Rae?” he replies, catching himself.

“I feel dizzy.” Nearly as soon as the words leave her mouth, she sways on her feet, dangerously close to toppling over until—

“Easy!” Max rushes to her side, steadying her. “We should wait a while. We should...we can sit here for a while. Let you get your bearings.”

But she shakes her head, almost too vigorously for someone who’s gone about as white as the Spacer’s Choice moon. “No, I wanna go.”

 _Hm_. Not the way her body shakes where she stands. Not the way he’s becoming convinced she couldn’t walk the few steps back into that damned hermit’s house, let alone all the way to the ship.

“It’s okay,” he decides. “I’ll carry you. I’ve got you.”

She’s lighter than she looks in all her gear but then, _I haven’t held her like this before_ and _I haven’t held her at_ all _before_ and _Law, if I could have ever imagine how holding her might be, this wasn’t it._ But it’s easy to hoist her onto his back, her arms tightening into a little loop around his neck. He can hear her shallow breaths in his ear as he begins to walk.

It’s not long before she tenses, before her fingers dig into his shoulder until he slows down a little.

“I feel sick.”

He grimaces. “It’s the motion. Just close your eyes. That’ll help.”

He hopes he doesn’t sound too harsh.

But—

“Max,” she mumbles into his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

_I was too harsh._

“Please don’t apologize, Captain—”

“Rae.”

“—Rae,” he whispers. _Of course_. “Please don’t apologize Rae. This is all...I dragged you out here, for my own selfish reasons. I didn’t know what would happen. I would never have asked you to come with me if—”

“Was it worth it?” she interrupts him. Her fingers are cold and trembling against his neck but she holds on tight, her eyes still squeezed shut when he tilts his head to glance down at her. “Was it—was it good for you, Max?”

 _It was_ , of course, but _Rae, that’s not what matters right now_. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”

The next time he looks down, she has a frown on her face.

“I just want you to be happy.”

No one has ever cared about his happiness before. Least of all himself.

He figures if he brushes her off, doesn’t answer, then she won’t speak to him again. And he’s right. And yet the satisfaction of being right, for once, evades him. They walk in silence the rest of the way just as they’d walked in their journey out, only now Max is the only one walking, led by the blinking yellow lights of the distant Unreliable among the otherwise dark aether, black and purple and blue like a still-raw, stubborn bruise. Every so often her feeble grip tenses around him, and his breath catches in his throat with every movement she makes, and no amount of _are you all right?_ s that he whispers softly elicit anything more than an obvious lie: _I’m fine_.

Her eyes are still closed when they reach the base of the landing pad; he _knows_ , because he’s glanced at her seemingly every few seconds since they’d left the village.

“We’re back,” he says softly.

When she opens her eyes, they’re red, glassy, tired. “Oh. Good.”

He doesn’t ask her if she’d rather walk— _I’ve asked too much of her already_ —so he carries her inside, too. And if the guilt of her condition hadn’t been weighing on him already, it seeps into every step he takes into the airlock and on board.

 _It’s quiet_ , he notices at first; he’s got no concept of how much time passed while they were away and _not that it matters anyway, the whole damn planet is always dark as it is_ , but the ship is silent and as he brings her up the stairs and past her room, no noise or movement sounds from the corridors above.

“How are you feeling now?” he murmurs, pausing on the halfway landing before her room.

“Still sick.”

“Okay.”

He continues upwards to the bathroom, the dim lights in the hallway confirming it _is_ night cycle, and _the others must be asleep_ , he thinks, relieved. Only once they’re in the bathroom does he let her down, flexing his fingers when he does. He hadn’t noticed them getting stiff before, _but we’ve come a long way_.

“I’ll leave you alone—” he starts, but he’s interrupted when she vomits into the toilet, and he thinks maybe leaving her alone isn’t the best idea. So he stands. Helplessly. Watching her grip the sides of the toilet with white knuckles, shaking hands. “Rae—”

“Rae?” calls a voice from down the hall, and he frowns. _Ellie_.

She’s pale as can be and clutching the toilet and sweating and shaking and he can’t think of anything else to do but stand in the doorway, because _this isn’t Ellie’s business_ , it’s his business. Or rather, his fault.

It’s easier said than done when the doctor meets him in the open door. “What the _fuck_ happened?” she demands, trying to move past him into the bathroom.

But he stands his ground. “I’ve got it.”

“What happened?” she asks again, eyes narrowed at him. “When did you—did you just get back? Is she—” She looks at him carefully, into his eyes, and he has no doubt of what she can find there. “Did you—”

“We had,” he interrupts her quickly, “an, um, experience. She didn’t take it very—”

“You both went on a drug trip and Rae’s went bad.”

“Well—”

“ _Whatever_ , Vicky,” she mutters, no humor or camaraderie in the nickname this time. She rolls up her sleeves impatiently. “I’ll take it from here, so—”

“I’ve _got_ it,” he repeats, glancing over his shoulder to see Rae sitting on the floor, breathing deeply. He lowers his voice. “This is all my fault. I’ll take care of it.”

_I’ll take care of her._

Ellie scowls at him, glaring, but he holds his ground. Finally, she crosses her arms. “Let her puke, if she needs to.”

“Okay,” he says quickly.

“And after that, water.”

“Okay.”

“ _Lots_ of water.”

“All right.”

“And—”

“And _what_?” he demands, impatient, and he can practically _see_ her fuming.

“And fuck you, Max, that’s what.”

He says nothing to that. He probably deserves it. When she’s gone, when he returns to Rae’s side, she’s leaning against the cold tile wall, hugging her knees to her chest. He doesn’t ask her if she’s heard anything in the hall.

“Are you all right?” he asks her, and though she doesn’t make eye contact with him, she shrugs. It’s enough. For now. “Let’s get your teeth brushed.”

She sighs, covering her eyes with her hand. “I just wanna go to sleep.”

“You can,” he assures her sympathetically. “But first, teeth.”

She doesn’t argue a second time, but she doesn’t make to stand either, so reluctantly, he finds her toothbrush on the shelf— _the one with the pink handle_ —and passes it to her on the floor.

And he makes her drink a glass of water when she’s done, for one because the last thing he needs is Ellie on his case all night, but also because _Ellie was right_ and _it’s what she needs_ and _it should help_.

“Let’s get you to bed,” he says quietly.

He knows Ellie is watching them from the kitchen down the hall as he helps her out of the bathroom, one arm around her before he leads her down the stairs. And it’s not enough to bring her to her room. _No_ , he brings her to her room, to her bed, pulling the covers back for her before he lets her down with care.

“All right,” he says gently. “There you go.”

She presses her fingers to her forehead once she’s settled in, rubbing her temples, and he sighs.

“Cap—Rae—I’m so sorry for...making you come along with me. Tonight.”

It’s dark, just like it had been a week earlier when he’d visited her in her quarters. But he can see the way her eyes linger on him, curious if tired. “Did it help?” she asks quietly, and he brushes her off.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“Are you going to leave?”

He looks back at her, puzzled. “You need to rest now.”

“Max,” she says, reaching out to brush her fingers over his hand. He shivers. “Are you leaving?”

Not _are you leaving now?_ but _are you leaving?_

 _We have to talk_ , he wants to say, and so much more than that too. But _tomorrow,_ he thinks, _not now_.

He places two bottles on the floor for her. “There’s water here for you, okay? Try to drink some when you can.”

“Max.”

_We can’t talk about this now._

“I don’t want you to go.”

“Rae—”

“Stay with me like I stay with you.”

He swallows, his throat tight, mouth dry. “Not tonight.”

And he _sees_ the word on her lips: _why?_ Silent, unvoiced, unsaid. But he sees it.

“You need to rest,” he insists. “And drink some water.”

But she shakes her head, her breath quickening. “I wish...I just wish you—”

“I do.” _Rae, I do._ “We can talk tomorrow, I promise.”

He stands up, straightens from where he’d knelt beside her bed, nodding once again to the bottles of water as though she’s looking anywhere but at him, desperately searching for something he’s not ready to talk with her about yet. “You need to get some sleep,” he says again, tearing his eyes from her and making for the door.

“Max.”

He pauses.

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

He swallows again. _Tomorrow_ , he thinks. “Goodnight, Captain.”

From her bed in the dark room, she sniffles just once, quietly, and his heart aches. “It’s Rae,” she whispers.


	8. Law Be Damned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *gestures at rae* is this a vessel for my own insecurities?

He doesn’t bother waking her the next morning. The fact is that he can’t even bring himself to leave his cabin, let alone make the walk across the ship to her quarters. _She’s a late sleeper anyway_ , he tries to tell himself, but the truth is that for one, he’s no longer in good graces—if not with Rae, then with Ellie for sure. _And word travels fast on this damned ship as it is_. He has no doubt she’s gone ahead and run her mouth on whatever she thinks happened the night before. She’d hardly given him a chance to explain, although when he thinks back, what would he have said if she did?

The truth, he supposes. That bringing Rae along was a mistake. That putting her in such a position to indulge in his own life’s work and ponderings was selfish at best and reckless and dangerous at worst. And yet it’s what he wanted. It’s the only thing he’d wanted for so, so long—answers. To what, he’s not even sure anymore. It had seemed clearer the day before. It had made sense. Bakonu’s book, the religious teachings, the hermit—everything had made sense. Everything was part of his Plan, his entire _life’s_ work.

And he’d been a fool.

And he’d never been so glad to feel so wrong about things.

His only regret is that it cost Rae so much to get him the answers he’d always sought.

It’s not just the way she’d fallen ill the night before, although he still feels painfully guilty for that. _Whatever Dr. Fenhill has decided she thinks of me is probably right_ , he muses. But _no_ , it’s more. Everything about her—every single damned thing—that he’d been able to brush off, push aside, swallow back, dismiss as something unattainable, unreasonable, unnecessary—is exactly what he’d been missing.

And he has to tell her.

But it’s early morning, and there are whispers down the hall in the kitchen, and it’s not the time. _Not yet_.

His clothes are still neatly folded atop his desk, as are several of his books, stray tossball cards Rae had gifted him throughout their travels, and the little container of incense Max had found in his pack upon retiring to his quarters the night before. He doesn’t recall taking it from the hermit’s house, but then _my mind was focused on other things_ , and regardless, he has it now. And it sits among the rest of his few possessions, neither packed away in preparation to leave nor in his dresser and on his bookshelves where they belong. They were somewhere in between, much like their owner, though Max can’t bring himself to relocate them one way or another.

He’s still lost in his thoughts when he hears the voices in the kitchen grow from hushed whispers to worried questions and well-meaning _good mornings_.

 _Rae_.

The others talk over each other, though he can pick out some of what they say: _are you okay?_ and _how are you feeling?_ and _what happened last night?_ and if she replies, he doesn’t hear it. Not when the others are clamoring to speak to her, not when his heart pounds in his chest, not when her answers are probably murmured and quiet as it is.

He hadn’t been ready to speak to her last night and _Law_ , he still isn’t sure he’s ready, but _it’s a conversation that has to happen_. He has so much to tell her, and how much time he has left to say it, he’s not sure. So he stands on uncertain feet, and he opens his door.

She’s not facing him when he crosses the hall and into the kitchen entrance. No. She’s turned around, in her gray sweatpants and an old t-shirt, pink hair uncombed and tangled from sleep, pouring herself a mug of stale cold coffee he knows Felix brewed hours earlier.

Nyoka sees him first, and she elbows Ellie in the ribs immediately. Neither of them say anything but he can _feel_ the doctor’s death glare on him where he stands, and already the room seems to have grown colder, and Parvati and Felix glance at him too.

“Is there any bred left?” Rae asks, her voice still crackly from sleep, and the very sound of it tugs at Max’s heart. She finishes stirring the sweetener into her coffee and drops the spoon into the sink, turning around. “I don’t think I can stomach much else besides—oh.”

The coffee sloshes from her cup and onto the floor when she stops in her tracks, open mouthed, staring at him.

It’s enough for everyone else to vacate the room, almost immediately. Parvati hurries past him toward the engine room, Felix disappears into his own cabin and slams the door shut, and Nyoka mutters something about _going to hunt some primals_ , disappearing down the stairs with Ellie in tow. And like that, it’s just the two of them. He’s sure he looks like shit—he’d barely slept the night before. And Rae’s still as pale as a ghost. And it’s silent except for the rickety _buzz_ of the old refrigerator, and the whole room smells like sugary spilled coffee, and Max feels like he can barely breathe.

And they stare at each other.

“I was afraid you were going to leave,” she whispers, and he shakes his head.

“I’m still here.”

She starts to nod, slowly, but then faster, no words leaving her lips as they stare at one another. They’re in the same room, sharing the same scratched-up steel flooring, and yet she seems galaxies away from him.

He has to tell her.

“Rae—”

“I thought you were going to leave,” she says again, and she crosses the room and in two steps she’s reached him and she stands on her toes and she touches his cheek and he closes his eyes and she’s _kissing_ him, just once, just quickly, a ghost of a touch of her lips before her feet are flat on the ground again. Her shoulders rise and fall with her breathing, and her cheeks glow a pale rose before she averts her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.”

Whatever he was going to say to her, because he’s still not quite sure—can wait. He had the luxury of feeling the touch of her lips again and he wants _more_. Before she can say anything, he takes her in his arms again, tilts her chin up to him with a gentle finger, and kisses her back. He’s tried to tell her what he feels like this before, _you foolish man_ , tried to help her understand without words, with only soft touches and kisses and _maybe the second time’s the charm_ , he thinks rather stupidly, but he’s no good with words that aren’t stubborn and callous and coarse and if he can just hold her for long enough then maybe for once, for _once_ , he can find a way to _tell her_ feelings he’d never known he was capable of before.

She pulls away—just barely. Just enough that if he tilts his head right, his nose will still brush against hers, and he can feel her warm breath on his lips. “I told you not to kiss me like that,” she whispers.

“ _Rae_ —”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Then how do you want me to kiss you?”

She stares at him, ice-gray eyes wide with confliction and pooled with feeling. _Longing_ , he thinks. Or hope.

“How do you want me to kiss you, Rae?” he says again softly.

She swallows. He can hear it. He can hear her breath quicken. “Like—” she starts, _tries_ , and she turns away now, _don’t_ , steps away from him, eyes downcast.

He clears his throat. “If I’ve misunderstood—”

“Like that.”

He gapes at her, and she exhales, breath shaking, looking up to the ceiling as though the answers lay there and not _here_ and—

“Like that,” she repeats, voice so quiet he might be mistaking her completely, “only I wish you would mean it, Max.”

Law, he _is_ a fool. He could kick himself. _We should have talked first_.

“ _What_ a _mess_!” SAM says behind him, and Rae’s eyes linger on him a moment longer before she takes the opportunity to slip out of the kitchen and down the stairs. Max is fairly certain the automechanical is referring to the puddle of coffee still sitting on the floor, but he can’t help but apply it to his own stupidity as well.

He hurries after her, descending the stairs two steps at a time. “Rae!”

Her voice comes out strangled, uncertain when she replies. “I hope you found what you were looking for, Max.”

“ _Rae_.” He follows her into the control room, _her_ space, and he feels like an intruder in a place he doesn’t belong, just like he had one time before but she doesn’t tell him to leave, and his feet wouldn’t lead him away if he wanted them to.

She sits in her chair, turned away from him, staring out to the pale purple atmosphere of Scylla below them.

“Rae,” he repeats, and ADA flickers on the monitor next to her.

“Captain, if you would like me to close the door on the vicar, it is well within my capabilities.”

He frowns.

“No, ADA,” Rae says finally. “Actually, if you could just…” She gestures at the screen. “Give us some space.”

“Turning my screen off has no effect on my shipwide surveillance, Captain.”

“I _know_ , but just—”

“Very well, Captain,” the AI interrupts her, and the screen goes blank.

He clears his throat. _She’s right_ , he thinks; he knows ADA is still _present_ , technically, but the lack of a visual is surprisingly comforting. “Um. I was hoping we could talk.”

Rae shrugs. “I don’t want to talk.”

 _Then why did you ask ADA for privacy?_ he thinks, exasperated, and he knows _it’s more complicated than that_ but _why does everything have to be so complicated?_

A stupid question. It’s mostly his fault.

“Then what _do_ you want?” Max tries, quieter this time, as though ADA’s lack of appearance will give way to sharper hearing.

Rae shrugs, fiddling with the knobs and switches on the control board.

“Rae, please—”

“More than you want to give me,” she interrupts him. “And I’ve come to terms with that. It’s all right Max, really. I know you’re going to leave—”

“I don’t want to leave.”

She freezes. “O-of course,” she says finally. “If there’s something else—somewhere else you need a ride to, you’re always welcome on board, and I’ll see what I can—”

“There’s nowhere I need to go.”

She spins her chair around finally, eyes glassy, shining. “Then what are you...what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that…” He exhales, clasps his hands behind his back. “That I would like to stay with you Rae. If you’ll have me.” And then he waits.

At first, she says nothing. But she furrows her brow, and her cheeks turn red.

He swallows.

Finally, she averts her eyes. “Don’t make fun of me, Max.”

His heart sinks. “I’m not—”

“I asked you to stay last night and you said no.”

“I didn’t say _no_ —”

“You wouldn’t answer me! And that—and that said _everything_!” She shakes her head, at a loss. “You’re not lonely and you don’t need anyone, Max,” she whispers. “You have room for one devotion in your life and it’s the OSI. You’ve always made that clear. I wanted to talk last night. I wanted to know how things went. And I _asked_ you to stay because I thought—I thought _maybe_ you might—but you _don’t_ , and you didn’t answer me, at all, and—”

“I didn’t answer because I had too much to say!” Max interrupts her. “And saying it to you last night, when I could barely process what had happened, when you were ill and getting you home all right was my highest—my _only_ priority…” He sighs. “It would’ve been unfair to you, Rae.”

She looks at him coldly. Painfully. “You still could have said _something_.”

“I—I know,” he admits. “I didn’t know how. I still don’t. I suppose I’m not very good at being candid about things.”

“You have to start somewhere.”

He nods. And he takes a deep breath. “You’re right.” _About so many things_.

“Maybe with answering my questions from last night,” she suggests, playing with the hem of her t-shirt. She doesn’t look up. “I just...wanted to know. If you got what you wanted.”

“I did.” He swallows. “I—I did. Though maybe not in the way I could have expected. But in a good way, still. I just—everything I believed. It’s all wrong, Rae.”

She looks up again at him, briefly, raising her eyebrows skeptically.

“I know. But the Plan...the Equation...thinking everything was all mapped out already, thinking I knew what to expect...it’s wrong. And I think, maybe, I was starting to figure that out even before we visited the hermit. Even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself.” He clenches and unclenches his fists. “Like _you_ , for example, Rae. I never expected you. When you walked into my chapel in Edgewater right when I was on the cusp of losing it, knowing it’d been years and I still hadn’t located Bakonu’s book, I thought it was...a coincidence, at best. And barely that—the Plan doesn’t allow for coincidences. But here you were, neither laborer nor Board, waltzing around the Emerald Vale doing... _whatever_ you wanted, really. You didn’t even know what Scientism was. I’m convinced you _still_ don’t know what it is but that’s—it’s irrelevant now, anyway. I brushed it off at the time. I joined you. I still didn’t know who you were or why you were on Terra 2 but I knew you’d gotten me as far as Bakonu’s journal, and there are no—”

“—no coincidences in the Plan,” she finishes for him quietly. “Yes, I know.”

“But that’s just it!” He wrings his hands, silently begging her to look at him again. “I thought that. I believed that. But it’s all wrong. The _Plan_ , the _Grand Architect_ , my _path_. It doesn’t add up. I thought I knew what to expect. With everything. But Rae, I never expected _you_.”

“You could say that about anyone, though,” she says, and he can read the doubt all over her face, in her disheartened voice. “You never expected Parvati, or Ellie, or…”

He shakes his head. “That may be right, but Rae...there’s a reason I’ve never been at peace with the OSI’s teachings. Or with anything, really. I’ve been preaching words that I don’t even know if I ever believed in. Or that I didn’t care if I believed or not. I wanted to, once, but—”

“Max—”

“I know, I know,” he says. “It’s not...I’m not making much sense right now. But I think I—I _wanted_ to find truth in the plan. So much that I dismissed things right in front of me that were living proof against it!” He looks into her eyes, pleading.

“Like me,” she says quietly—somehow neither a statement nor a question.

He nods. “Like you. And I—I wanted to believe everything was part of the plan, that there was no such thing as...as chaos, or coincidence, or accidents. It’s what I’d always known. It’s what my parents believed, what everyone believes. But _you_ were always unexpected. Everything about you. Meeting you. Traveling with you. The things you do, the things you say to me. The way you make me question myself, or my own decisions. No one has ever done that to me. _For_ me. I only wish…”

 _Now_ she looks up, eyes sad.

“I only wish it hadn’t taken so long and so much for me to realize.”

The corners of her mouth turn up in a strained, hesitant smile, so brief it’s disappeared almost before he can process it. “I’m glad I could help you find your answers, Max.”

“You did,” he says, confidently now. “And I don’t—I’ve never felt so certainly... _uncertain_ about things before. In a good way, I think.”

“Like what?”

The confidence leaves him like the breath from his lungs and he shifts on his feet. “Like leaving you,” he says finally, shaking his head. “I—I asked myself. Last night. ‘Why would I do that?’ A-and I can, still, if it would make you more comfortable, but I don’t...I don’t know if I want to.”

“You don’t know?” she asks, and again, _what a fool I am_. “You either do or you d—”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“Why not?”

 _Why?_ He furrows his brow. “Because I—”

“You’ve always seemed so unbothered by the idea of leaving, Max,” she says. “And I meant it when I said I just wanted you to be happy. But it’s not—it’s not me that does that for you. Not the way you do for me, I just _know_ —”

“That’s not true.”

“It _is_ true!” she argues, fear and insecurity seeping into her voice. “It _is_ true. Because when I’m with you, I don’t feel as lonely. I—I still feel stuck. Like I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, ever. And everyone is looking to me to make decisions so I fake it and I do what I think is the right thing even if I’m not really sure and I think—I think—maybe we’re the same like that, Max. And I love that about you. You have this—this act, that you know everything and you’re so stubborn and you’re so sure of yourself but when you look at me, sometimes you’re not so sure. And when you didn’t have all the answers, it made me feel like I wasn’t so alone. Because y-you didn’t really know what you were doing either. But now, now you have what you wanted. You have what you were looking for. And maybe you just want to stay here because you don’t know what to do next—”

“No—”

“And I’m so happy I could help you, Max,” she insists, her eyes pooling with tears. “So, so happy. Really. But you don’t need my help anymore. And you don’t have to stay here. You can—you can do anything now.”

“But—”

“I don’t want you to feel obligated—”

“Rae!” he says finally, _loud_ , but he lowers his voice again. “Rae. There’s no obligation. I don’t—I have _never_ felt like I _had_ to do anything for you. With you. I’ve told you I enjoy your company and I _do_. I enjoy the time I spend with you. I enjoy being with you. Maybe it was all supposed to be meaningless, once. At the start. But you…” He takes a deep breath. “...have come to mean _so_ much to me. And that meaning doesn’t end after you’ve helped open my eyes to so many new possibilities.”

She shakes her head, digging her fingers into her tangled hair but he can still see her shoulders rise and fall with her breathing, even when she hides her face from him.

“You’re right, Rae,” he continues softly. “You—you’ve always been right. About me being lonely. About me not knowing what I was doing. And now again, you’re right—I can do anything I want from here. But what I want is to stay with you.” He pauses. “If I can. If you want that too.”

She takes a deep breath before looking up at him again. Her face is still pale, her eyes tired. _She looks beautiful though_ , he thinks, shamelessly, and he’s seen her in pajamas with tangled hair every morning since he’d joined the crew of the Unreliable but he feels now almost like he’s looking at her with new eyes.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“I’m not sure of much anymore,” he replies. “But about this? Yes.”

“You really want to stay on the Unreliable—”

“No. I want to stay with _you_. But if that happens to be on the Unreliable, then yes.”

“You really want to stay with me,” she says, almost in disbelief.

He nods. “If there’s a way to better convince you…”

She gets up from her chair. Her hands shake when she brushes her hair out of her face. “ADA, close the door.”

For once, the AI has nothing to say when she does it, and for that, Max is grateful.

With the door closed, there’s little light left in the control room except for the panels and switches on the dashboard and the pale purple hue of Scylla below them, but it’s enough to see the look in Rae’s eyes when she steps toward him, slowly. She smells like spilled coffee. And she looks like she’s walked through the void itself.

And he loves it.

“Kiss me like you did before,” she tells him.

And he does. He cradles her face gently in his hands and kisses her, her lips soft and warm against his own. He takes his time. He lets his hands wander into her hair, behind her ears. Over the fabric of her shirt. Around her waist, pulling her to him because _a kiss is well and good but I need her closer_. And he holds her. And somewhere along the line, she pulls him backwards. Her fingers are cold _but we can do something about that_ , he thinks, and she pushes him into her chair but he takes her hands again once she’s in his lap, kisses her palms first and then her fingers one at a time, and murmurs her name. “Rae.”

“Max.”

He opens his mouth to speak again, but she places two fingers on his lips, silencing him.

“Wait.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t want you to talk about the OSI anymore.”

He nods. “All right,” he agrees, and she smiles, genuinely, for the first time all day. He loves her smile.

She leans in to kiss him again, and he can feel her fingers in his hair. “I’d rather hear you talk about tossball.”

He snorts. “Tossball?”

She kisses him once, twice on the lips before nodding. “Because you love it. And it makes you happy when you talk about it.” He tries to kiss her again but she evades him, a teasing glint in her eyes. “And it makes you smile even when you know no one else cares. _Especially_ when you know no one else cares.”

He chuckles at that, and her grin fades a little, but she still touches his cheeks, the stubble on his jaw where he hasn’t shaved in two days. “I really do want you to be happy,” she says seriously.

“I am happy, when I’m with you.”

This time when he tries to kiss her, she lets him. And she sighs into it, too, and it makes him smile.

_I mean it._

“Me too,” she breathes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just one more epilogue chapter after this :0


	9. Into the Unknown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an epilogue

The roots of her hair have grown ever more brown since she’d last dyed it. Or more accurately, since Nyoka had last dyed it for her, holding Rae hunched over the drain of the shower with slimy globs of dye the color of wild canids clumped in her hair as the mercenary combed through her fine tresses little by little.

Max can tell something’s upsetting her, and he asks, and though she pulls at the ends of her hair and gestures defeatedly to the mirror of the bathroom where she’s spent most of the morning moping, he has a feeling it’s not really about the dye at all. He just hasn’t found the right way to approach it yet.

“ _Most_ of it is still pink,” he says unhelpfully.

He’s right—the vast majority of her hair is still pink, and the parts that aren’t are easily hidden beneath a helmet or a hat if she really wants—but it’s no use. She brushes him off without a word and returns to her quarters, perhaps to mourn in peace.

 _Well_. If she wants peace, she shouldn’t have chosen _him_ for a lover.

He follows her down the hall—empty now that Felix and Ellie have returned to the Groundbreaker—to find her slouched in her desk chair, swiveling slowly one way, and then the other, staring blankly at a computer screen that hasn’t lit up with new messages in days now.

“You can barely even notice when you wear it in a braid,” he tells her, taking a seat on her bed.

She just shrugs, and he sighs.

“Why don’t you just ask Nyoka to dye it for you again before she leaves for—”

“No!” Rae snaps, and finally, he understands.

And he’s right. It has nothing to do with the dye after all. “What’s this about?” he asks carefully, like he doesn’t _know_. He knows. He doesn’t need to hear her say it out loud. _But she might_.

“Nyoka is busy packing up her cabin.” Her words are terse, even-toned but almost cold, and she doesn’t turn around to look at him. “She’s getting ready to leave. I don’t need her help.”

“If you _asked_ her, she would—”

“Of course she would,” she interrupts him. “She has to. As long as she’s on this ship, she’s a part of my crew. And I’m her captain.”

 _So it’s going to be like this_. “You’ve never found it so hard to believe that anyone here wants to do something for you as a _friend_ and not just a subordinate,” he points out. “Why now?” _Say it. Just say it._

She stops swiveling her chair, pausing dead center with her back to him. “You know I left Earth seventy years ago, Max? Seventy years. Anyone I’d left behind is long gone now, and if they’re not, they will be s—”

“Who _did_ you leave behind?” he interrupts her. It’s not a challenge. It’s genuine. She’s never told him. But then, _I’ve never asked_.

She pauses, mouth half-open, and her eyes darken. “No one.”

“Rae—”

“I’m not avoiding the question, Max.” She purses her lips and swallows. “There was no one there for me. That’s why—why I signed up in the first place. To come here. All those people on the Hope—I didn’t know them. I mean, I didn’t have to know them for them to be worth saving, to me. But they were strangers. I didn’t have anyone…” Again, she stops herself. “And now I’m not going to have—”

“Rae, Rae.” He’s standing already, finally understanding, too late in sensing a spiral that’s already begun.

“Felix and Ellie already left,” she says as he comes to her side, and her eyes stare blankly into the aether outside her window. “And Nyoka’s leaving next.”

“Rae.”

“And Parvati’s going to the Groundbreaker too, after she stops by Edgewater again. And you—”

“And I what?” he asks her— _dares_ her, almost, if only to prove her fears wrong. He leans back against her desk, looking pointedly at her even if she refuses to look back.

“Captain,” ADA’s voice sounds over the intercom. “Your crewmates may have abandoned you, but as long as you are on the Unreliable and my system is functioning, I will still be with you.”

Max clenches his fists. “For _fuck’s_ sake, ADA.” He breathes deeply, closing his eyes for a moment, doing his best to suppress the annoyance building within him. _Calm down. You’re getting better at this_. _Just try a little_ fucking _harder_. Finally, he relaxes his fingers. And he opens his eyes. And Rae—forlorn, inconsolable Rae—is still sitting there. “And I what?” he asks again, quieter this time.

“And you’re going to have somewhere to go too.” She’s so quiet he almost can’t hear her. “Maybe—maybe back to Edgewater, or—”

He snorts. It’s not an appropriate time for laughter, and yet… “Rae, I spent every waking moment of my time in Edgewater wishing I were literally anywhere else. I was there for the damned book. That was it.”

“Oh.”

“But what’s more,” he continues, waiting for her to look at him before he continues. He needs her to see, to understand. “When I told you that I wanted to stay with you—whether it’s here on the ship or somewhere else—I meant that. That wasn’t a lie.”

“But—”

“Rae.” He leans over her and places one hand on each of her shoulders. “I’m not leaving you. I don’t have anywhere that I need to go. Or anywhere that I _want_ to go. Except for where you are, for now. But you’re friends—Felix and Ellie and Parvati and Nyoka—none of them are _leaving_ you. Not—not _really_.”

“I know what you’re trying to say, Max,” she mutters, her voice shaking. “But everything is going to be different, and…”

 _Can’t argue with her there_. “Things _are_ going to change.” He shakes his head thoughtfully. “But...I mean, Law, Rae, you own a _ship_. You can still see your friends anytime you want.”

“It’s not just that! It’s...everything was good. Finally.” Her ice-gray eyes stare at him, _through_ him, wide and glassy. “Why can’t something that’s good _stay_ good for a while?”

At last, he understands. “I suppose you’ve had your life turned upside-down enough times in the past year or so.”

“I just thought everything was finally good,” she says, again, as though she hadn’t heard him.

And he nods. _It can be good again_ , he wants to tell her, but that’s neither what she wants nor what she deserves to hear. Not when she’s been promised so much and gained none of it already—several times over. “I know. I know.”

“I just thought I had friends to call my own. B-but we came together with a job to do and now that job is done and—”

“They’re leaving the Unreliable, Rae,” he reminds her. “That doesn’t mean they’re leaving _you_.”

Only now does she look him in the eyes, silver-gray shining with unshed tears. “Do you blame me for not being able to see it any other way?”

He sighs. “No, I don’t. But that won’t stop me from trying to tell you that’s not the case.” He reaches out to her—slowly, first. Tests the waters. But she doesn’t pull away when his fingertip brushes the underside of her chin, so he leans in, kissing her once, softly. “Would you just ask Nyoka to help you with your hair?” he tries again. “She’s been one of your crewmates for months now. I don’t think asking her for another friendly thirty minutes of her time as a parting gift is going to be quite as inconvenient to her as you’ve convinced yourself.”

She frowns.

“And for what it’s worth, you might be a little happier with your hair all pink again anyway.”

“I’m sure _you’d_ like to see my hair all pink and brushed out,” she scowls, and he chuckles.

“My dear, you’ve never before asked for my opinion in the way you decide to wrangle that very long hair of yours into braids or not each day. Please don’t start now.”

* * *

Her hair—all of it—is pink again by the time Nyoka departs the ship a day later at the docks of Stellar Bay, the very base they’d picked her up in some months earlier, when Rae was a captain as green as the “Emerald” in Emerald Vale and Max was angrier, more irrtable, lost but with every insistence that he knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing.

 _We’re still lost_ , he supposes, _both of us._ _Just lost with the galaxy in a little less imminent danger of imploding. Lost and a little softer on our edges._

Rae holds onto Nyoka a little longer than he knows the mercenary is comfortable with, but for her part, Nyoka doesn’t object. _She’s a little softer than her edges show, too_ , Max thinks when she pats Rae’s back awkwardly with one hand.

“Easy, Cap,” she half-teases. “Not like I won’t drag you over here for a good mant hunt before you know it.”

Rae laughs in spite of the melancholy Max knows she feels inside—he can see it in the way her shoulders slump, the way her eyes fill with a hollow somberness. She pats her ribcage gingerly. “It might be a little soon for mant hunting. After last time”

“Ha! Rapts, then.”

“Maybe rapts,” Rae agrees, and Nyoka gives her a playful punch in her shoulder.

“Doesn’t matter. You know I’ll be seeing you soon. Once things get back to normal.”

Rae says nothing to that, at least not verbally, but Max knows what she’s thinking: neither of them are quite sure what “normal” even looks like to a hired gun as renowned and celebrated as Nyoka. But she seems confident, and for Rae, apparently, that’s enough.

“I’ll miss you.”

“Don’t get mushy on me,” Nyoka warns, turning instead to Max. “Don’t let her get mushy, Vicar!”

He shrugs. “I’ll do my best.”

“You can leave me messages at the Yacht Club,” Nyoka promises, pushing the door to the airlock open. “I promise I’ll reply! Even if I’m out on a job and it takes a few weeks. I’ll reply.”

“Okay.”

Nyoka points a finger at her. “Don’t you dare cry.”

“I’m won’t!” Rae insists, waving her off. “I’m—it’s okay. Go on. Monarch is nothing without you, don’t make them wait.”

She raises her hand in a final wave to both of them, flashing a grin before she steps out, closing the door behind her.

 _And then there were two_ , he thinks. At least in the docking bay. Parvati’s been fiddling in the ship’s engine room since early morning and he _knows_ it’s not because anything on the ship needs fixing. _Rae’s been a wreck since Tartarus and she can tell. Everyone can tell._

He clears his throat, and Rae, still facing the closed door that Nyoka had left through moments before, nearly jumps out of her boots. “Jesus, Max,” she chokes, and he doesn’t need to _see_ her face to know she’s already broken her promise to Nyoka.

But she turns around anyway, and it’s as he thought. Her silver-gray eyes glitter in the cheap flickering light of the ship. She bites her lip and clenches her fists, blinking fast.

“Come on,” he tells her.

“Come on _where_?” she counters.

She doesn’t say anything of the tears in her eyes or the way her voice cracks when she speaks to him, so he makes a point not to ask. “To the kitchen.” He says it like it’s obvious, holding one hand up toward the stairs and beckoning to her with the other. “I’m going to make us lunch, and there’s a tossball game I want to catch, and I sincerely hope you won’t coop yourself up in your room for the rest of the afternoon again so perhaps you’ll do me the honor of catching it with me.”

Reluctantly, she follows him up the stairs, past her bedroom, down the hall. If she notices Parvati poke her head out of the engine room from afar, she doesn’t say anything. He gestures to the empty table in the kitchen, waiting for her to sit before he starts fiddling with the radio, turning the dial between fuzzy incomprehensible crackling and Spacer’s Choice jingles until he finally reaches the right channel.

“Who’s playing?” she asks.

“I believe it’s Auntie Cleo’s Darlings versus Rizzo’s Rangers today.” Satisfied with the radio, he turns around, glancing over the sorry array of stale bred, saltuna, and tarmac and cheese.

She sniffles. “That’s Felix’s team.”

“Hm? Oh, yes, I suppose it is.” He chuckles. “Funny, I was always under the impression that Mr. Millstone annoyed you.”

She scoffs, wiping the corner of her eye with her finger. “You’d be surprised at how much you miss someone when they’re no longer around to be annoying.”

He can’t relate. He certainly hasn’t had enough time to miss Felix yet—and he’s not sure he ever will—but this he keeps to himself, reaching for the loaf of bred and slipping two slices into the toaster. They’re quiet as he cooks, the hurried monotone of the tossball announcer permeated only by periodic interruption—the toaster popping, the gritty metal of the can opener gears grinding, a fork as it scrapes saltuna from the can onto their bred.

Rae, but for her sniffling, is silent as the grave.

He sprinkles a little powdered cheese from the old box of tarmac and cheese over their lunch. It doesn’t look _good_ , but it’s enough, and, satisfied, he places a plate each in front of Rae and himself, taking the seat across from her.

“ADA,” Rae says quietly, taking a bite from her sandwich, chewing, swallowing. She makes no comment on the taste, nor any significant expression of discern or approval. Only when she notices him looking at her does she shrug, nod.

_Good enough._

“Yes, Captain?”

“Set our course for Edgewater.”

Max nearly chokes on his sandwich, but ADA doesn’t miss a beat.

“Exiting orbit from Monarch. Launching course for Edgewater in T minus…”

Finally swallowing, he looks at Rae again, intently. “I don’t necessarily think Parvati’s in a _rush_ ,” he says gently.

She shrugs, taking another bite of her sandwich. “Do you know how many time’s she’s ‘fixed’ the reactors in the engine room?”

“Well, I—”

“She’s too kind to nudge me about leaving for Edgewater, but I know once she gathers her things at her house, she’ll be wanting to get back to Junlei.”

“Have you considered she’s not ‘too kind’ to ask you to hurry?” Max asks. “That maybe she enjoys being a part of your crew, and leaving it as just as bittersweet for you as it is for her?”

She frowns, pushing her bred around her plate with her finger. “Since when are you an expert on emotional counsel?”

“You’re avoiding my question. And for the record, I’ve always been an expert on emotional counsel. I just never cared enough to employ my expertise until I decided that your happiness is essential to my own.”

She rolls her eyes, but the rosy flush in her cheeks doesn’t escape him, and he can’t help but smile.

“You’re an expert in _spiritual_ counsel—”

“Which is really just emotional counsel, once you realize your religion is a bit of a sham.”

“You’re...the _last_ person I would want emotional counsel from.”

He shrugs. “What if the counsel was more or less ‘do as I say, not as I do’?”

She scoffs.

“Do I really need to convince you that I’m morally sound?”

She gapes at him. “You know, sometimes I think your self-awareness has improved since seeing that hermit. Other times I’m less convinced.”

“I—”

“To answer your question,” Rae interrupts him, “it doesn’t matter. In the end. If Parvati leaves sooner or later.”

He snorts.

“ _What_?”

“Nothing. It’s just that I’m not the only one who hasn’t changed since Scylla.”

* * *

In the end, they stay on course. She’s made up her mind, and there’s a point to be made—something about not believing that she’s _delaying the inevitable_ or that _spending time together is more important than rushing toward an end_ but he’s made his stance known and he lets her choose. And they carry on. And it’s early evening when they arrive in Emerald Vale. He can see sunset reflecting off the water by the landing pad from the porthole of his cabin. He can hear Parvati and Rae talking in the loading dock below: _won’t be more than a half-hour, Captain_ and something mumbled in response, and the airlock opens, and it closes, and he waits for Rae to return upstairs.

She doesn’t.

Carefully, cautiously, he returns the book he’d been thumbing through to its proper place on his shelf and emerges from his cabin. It’s quiet.

“The captain is outside, Vicar,” ADA declares over the intercom, and he nearly jumps—smooths his robes over, clears his through.

“Right. Thank you, ADA.”

He takes the rest of the hallway and stairs with a decided hurriedness, and when he opens the airlock to the outside, she’s there on the gangway, not sitting, not moving. Just standing, her back to the ship and her eyes on the township before them.

“This is where I met you,” she says quietly, not turning around.

He looks over the run-down town, dotted here and there with lights just starting to turn on with the impending nightfall, the dim-flickering Spacer’s Choice Edgewater sign keeping relentless watch over its citizens. _These people need help_ , he thinks, _the whole_ colony _needs help_ , and _there’s so much to be done and too many options of where to start_.

“I’m sure you thought me little more than a grumpy old fool.”

“I still think you’re little more than a grumpy old fool.”

He has to laugh at that. “Thank you, my dear,” he replies. “And for your part, I thought you were little more than a woman who was in way over her head.”

“I’m still that.”

“You are _much_ more than a woman who’s in way over her head. You’re a captain. And a hero of this damned colony. And—”

“Still in over my head.”

“Maybe, but aren’t we all?”

She shrugs. And she stands still.

“Well, anyway,” he asks her, leaning against the outer frame of the airlock, “where to next?”

She doesn’t turn around. She stays, halfway down the gangway, loose faded pink strands from her braids whipping in the salty winds off the coast of the town, and she waits for Parvati’s return.

 _She’ll be right back_ , he could tell her, like she doesn’t know, like she’d answer with anything more than _and then she’ll be leaving again_.

“Groundbreaker.”

 _Yes, I know_.

The sun is setting, and it will be dark soon.

 _Parvati will be right back_ , he thinks again, but it’s _after_ that that she’s thinking of, _after_ they drop her off on the Groundbreaker and the last of their crew but himself will have left them, _left her_ , and that’s why he asks, and he clears his throat. “After the Groundbreaker.”

Only now does she turn around, the deep orange sunset casting a precariously warm light upon the side of her face.

“I don’t know,” she says finally.

He doesn’t know either. And for once, the very idea doesn’t drive him mad.

“Well,” he supposes. “Blind faith and making shit up as you go have gotten us this far—respectively, of course.”

She cracks a smile.

_Good. It’s true._

“And though the Law-forsaken Board is demolished now, its influence and crimes against humanity are still far-reaching.”

She tilts her head to the side, weighing his words, the light of the sunset nearly glittering over her lashes, casting a silhouette past the side of her nose. “So you’re saying instead of having nothing to do, we really have everything to do.”

“And in so many places, too.”

She nods, thoughtful.

“And however it may feel, Rae, you really have made friends everywhere you’ve been. Go anywhere you like, you won’t be alone.”

“I wouldn’t be alone anyway,” she counters. “You already vowed to stick around here—why, I have no idea—”

“Because,” he says, placing his index fingers on his lips, “I love you. But you need more than just me to be happy, and I know that. And if we have to travel to the Groundbreaker and Monarch every week just so you can be around the friends you love, then I’d be happy to do that.”

She smiles at that, and when he removes his finger from her lips, she stands on her tiptoes to kiss him.

“I just don’t know where to start.”

“I think for once, Rae, that’s quite all right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks everyone for reading! this story was supposed to be fun and light and self-indulgent and it ended up being about four chapters longer than i expected...so if you've read and enjoyed for this long, i appreciate it! i may write more for rae and max in the future (maybe some one-shots here and there, esp because i'm itching to write from rae's pov), but my next project will be a sequel to my dragon age longfic, so i'll be out of TOW for a bit (at least for writing--i'll definitely still be reading!). thanks again for all the love and comments--i never meant for this story to be as big as it was, so i'm so so happy to see so many people really liked it. <3


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